Also in this issue.
Poetry from Canada
Poetry from South Americaincluding Pablo Neruda and Carilda Labra.
Poetry from EuropeIncluding Rilke, Desnos, Bartolo Cattafi, and Albert Samain.
Louis Armand was born in 1972. He studied arts and philosophy at a number of institutions and has travelled widely, living for periods in Sydney, Marrakech, Paris and New York. Since 1994 he has lived and worked in the Czech Republic, where he currently lectures on cultural theory and art history at Charles University, Prague. In 1997 he received the Max Harris Prize for poetry at the Penola Festival (Adelaide), and more recently he was awarded the Nassau Review Prize, 2000 (New York).Louis Armand is editor of the literary broadsheet Semtext (Plastic), a member of the editorial board of Rhizomes: Studies in Cultural Knowledge (Washington State University), and poetry editor of The Prague Revue. His publications include: Land Partition (Melbourne: Textbase, 2001), The Garden (Cambridge: Salt, 2001), Inexorable Weather (Lancashire: Arc, 2001), Base Materialism (New York: x-poezie, 2001), Synopticon with John Kinsella (Florida: Mudlark, 2000), Anatomy Lessons (New York, 1999), Erosions (Sydney: Vagabond Press, 1999) and Séances (Prague: Twisted Spoon Press, 1998). is one of a new generation of Australian poets which emerged in the 1990s. She writes in many genres. Her first book of poems, This is the Stone, won the 1991 Anne Elder and Dame Mary Gilmore Prizes. Her novel Navigatio, published by Black Pepper Press, was highly commended in the 1995 Australian/Vogel literary awards and is being translated for publication in France. Her second book of poems, The Blue Gate, was released in 1997 and was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Poetry Prize. A chapbook, Mnemosyne, was just published by Wild Honey Press. Penguin Books Australia will also bring out her first novel for young adults, The Gift, in 2002. Alison has written and had performed nine works for theatre. Her theatre work includes the operas Gauguin and The Burrow, both with Michael Smetanin, and the plays Lenz (Melbourne Festival 1996), Samarkand and The Famine. Many of her poems have been set to music by various composers, including Smetanin, Christine McCombe, and Margaret Legge-Wilkinson. Recently she was the 2000 Australia Council writer in residence at Cambridge University, UK. She was poetry editor for Overland Extra (1992), Modern Writing (1992-1994) and Voices (1996) and founding editor of the literary arts journal Masthead. She is represented in this issue by poetry, two essays on the poetic and the erotic, and her translations of Rilke.
Liz Hall-Downs has been reading and performing poetry in public, and publishing in journals, since 1983. She has been a featured reader at countless venues across Australia, has toured the USA, and has had work published and broadcast on TV and radio in both countries. As well as poetry, Liz writes fiction and essays and has worked as a community artist, writer-in-residence, editor and singer. She has a BA in Professional Writing and Literature, and has recently submitted for an MA (Creative Writing) at the University of Queensland. Her most recent collection of poetry, Girl With Green Hair was published by Papyrus Publishing in 2000. Current projects include an ‘illness narrative’ in poetry, My Arthritic Heart, and a realist novel, The Death of Jimi Hendrix. She lives in paradise in south-east Queensland, with her partner and an assortment of cheeky parrots.
