Stephen Edgar

Stephen Edgar (born 1951) is a contemporary Australian poet, editor and indexer. Edgar was born in Sydney in 1951 where he attended Sydney Technical High School. Between 1971 and 1974 he lived in London and worked as a library assistant in the Borough of Lambeth. On returning to Australia, he moved to Hobart, Tasmania, where he read English and Classics at the University of Tasmania, receiving a BA in 1978 and a Graduate Diploma in Librarianship in 1985. His first published poetry appeared in 1979 in the Tasmanian literary quarterly "Island" (originally "The Tasmanian Review"). From 1986 to the present he has been subeditor of "Island" and was poetry editor between 1989 and 1994. He is the author of six books of poetry, with a seventh due for publication in 2009. As poet Kevin Hart observed, Edgar “is distinctive for a firm commitment to closed forms and for showing considerable panache in handling them”. In 2005 he returned to Sydney. He is married to Australian poet Judith Beveridge. [Hart, Kevin, entry on Stephen Edgar in "The Oxford Companion" to Twentieth-Century Poetry in English, edited by Ian Hamilton (OUP, 1994)] For further information on Australian poets see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Australian_poets]

Awards and Nominations

1984—Harri Jones Memorial Prize2004—Grace Leven Poetry Prize and William Baylebridge Memorial Prize (for his fifth book Lost in the Foreground)2005—Australian Book Review Poetry Prize (for his poem “Man on the Moon”)2006—Philip Hodgins Memorial Medal for an outstanding contribution to Australian literature, at the Mildura Writers’ Festival.

Bibliography

* "Queuing for the Mudd Club" (Hobart, Twelvetrees Publishing Company, 1985, ISBN 0959008209)
* "Ancient Music" (Sydney, Angus and Robertson, 1988, ISBN 0207156980)
* "Corrupted Treasures" (Melbourne, William Heinemann Australia, 1995, ISBN 0855615451)
* "Where the Trees Were" (Canberra, Indigo/Ginninderra Press, 1999, ISBN 1740270134)
* "Lost in the Foreground" (Sydney, Duffy and Snellgrove, 2003, ISBN 1876631643; reprinted Warners Bay, Picaro Press, 2008, ISBN 9781920957537)
* "Other Summers" (Melbourne, Black Pepper Publishing, 2006, ISBN 1876044543)

External links

* [http://www.clivejames.com/poetry/edgar Poems and introductory article at the Clive James website]
* [http://users.vic.chariot.net.au/~bpepper/edgaros.html Reviews and articles at Black Pepper Publishing website]
* [http://www.the-write-stuff.com.au/archives/vol-7/stephen_edgar/index.html Poems and comments at The Write Stuff]

References