John Tranter (Australia)
1943-2023
Born on April 29, 2943 in Cooma, New South
Wales, Australia, John Tranter attended country schools before his sporadic
early university education, receiving at BA in 1970.
Throughout
his life Tranter worked mainly in publishing, teaching, and radio production.
He
traveled widely, living in Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane in Australia, and
elsewhere in London, Cambridge, Singapore, and in the US in Florida and San
Francisco.
With
his wife Lyn, who had two children Kirsten and Leon, he headed the Australian
Literary Management, a leading literary agency, for much of his life. In 2009,
he completed his Doctorate of Creative Arts at the University of Wollongong.
Throughout his life he received numerous fellowships and grants,
becoming a visiting fellow at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida and at
Cambridge University in England.
Beginning
in 1970, Tranter published books of poetry including Parallax, followed
by Red Movie and Other Poems, The Alphabet Murders, Dazed in
the Ladies Lounge, Selected Poems, Under Berlin, The Floor
of Heaven, Late Night Radio, Urban Myths, and Starlight,
along with several other collections.
As
an editor he compiled The Penguin Book of Modern Australian Poetry with
Philip Mead (1991), and an earlier anthology, The New Australian Poetry
(1979). And his continuing commitment to Australian poetry was central to his
life. In 2004, he built a free prototype internet site that presented
biographical and bibliographical information of about seventy Australian poets,
including poems, book reviews, and interviews, a project taken on by the University
of Sydney English Department, the University of Sydney Library and the
Copyright Agency Limited. In 2006 that consortium as granted a large sum of money
by the Australian Research Council to further extend its activities.
On
the international level he began in 1997 the important internet poetry magazine
Jacket, which published and edited until 2010, transferring it to others
at the University of Pennsylvania, where it continues today, one of the most
in-depth and intelligent of poetic journals.
He
also edited The Best Australian Poetry collections of 2007, 2011, and
2012.
For his books and poetry and many other activities, Tranter received
several major awards, including the Grace Leven Prize for Poetry (1988), the
New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards Kenneth Slessor Prize (1989), The Age
Book of the Year Award for Poetry (1993), the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award
C. J. Dennis Prize for Poetry (2007), South Australian Premier’s Awards John
Bray Prize for Poetry (2008), and the Arts Queensland Judith Wright Calanthe
Award for Poetry (2011).
BOOKS OF POETRY
Parallax
(South Head Press, 1970); Red Movie and Other Poems (Angus &
Robertson, 1973); The Blast Area (Makar Press, 1973); The Alphabet
Murders(notes from a work in progress) (Angus & Robertson,
1976); Crying in Early Infancy: 100 Sonnets (Makar Press, 1977); Dazed
in the Ladies Lounge (Island Press, 1979); Selected Poems (Hale
& Iremonger, 1983); Under Berlin (University of Queensland Press,
1988); The Floor of Heaven (HarperCollins / Angus & Robertson,
1991); At The Florida (University of Queensland Press, 1993); Late
Night Radio (Polygon Press, 1998); Urban Myths: 2010 Poems: New and
Selected (University of Queensland Press, 2006); Starlight: 160 Poems
(University of Queensland Press, 2010)
For a selection of his poems, go here: