GRAY, Robert (Curtis) 1945-

PERSONAL: Born February 23, 1945, in Coffs Harbour, New South Wales, Australia.

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Mail, Angus & Robertson, 1/1 Talavera Road, North Ryde, New South Wales 2113, Australia.

CAREER: Poet and writer. Has worked variously as a book shop salesperson, advertising copy writer, magazine writer and editor, and reviewer. Worked forSydney Morning Herald, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia; writer-in-residence at universities in Australia and at Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan.

AWARDS, HONORS: Literature Board of Australia, senior fellowships; Marten Bequest traveling scholarship, 1982; Adelaide Arts Festival National Poetry Award, New South Wales Premier's Award for poetry, and Grace Leven Poetry Prize, all 1986, all for Selected Poems, 1963-1983; Patrick White Award, 1990; Victorian Premier's Literary Award, for Certain Things; Poetry Book of the Year, Age, and Victorian Premiers Prize for Poetry, both 2002, both for Afterimages.

WRITINGS:

POETRY

Introspect, Retrospect, Lyre-Bird Writers (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia), 1970.

Creekwater Journal, University of Queensland Press (St. Lucia, Queensland, Australia), 1974.

Grass Script, Angus & Robertson (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia), 1978.

The Skylight, Angus & Robertson (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia), 1983.

Selected Poems, 1963-1983, Angus & Robertson (North Ryde, New South Wales, Australia), 1985, revised and expanded version published as Selected Poems ("Modern Poets" series), 1990.

Piano, Angus & Robertson (North Ryde, New South Wales, Australia), 1988.

Certain Things, William Heinemann Australia (Port Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 1993.

New and Selected Poems ("Poetry" series), William Heinemann Australia (Port Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 1995.

Lineations, Duffy & Snellgrove (Potts Point, New South Wales, Australia), 1996.

New Selected Poems, Duffy & Snellgrove (Potts Point, New South Wales, Australia), 1998.

Afterimages, Duffy & Snellgrove (Potts Point, New South Wales, Australia), 2002.

EDITOR

(With Geoffrey Lehmann) The Younger Australian Poets (anthology), Hale & Iremonger (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia), 1983.

(With Graeme Sturgeon and Christopher Gentle) Alun Leach-Jones, Craftsman House (Roseville, New South Wales, Australia), 1988.

(With Geoffrey Lehmann) Australian Poetry in the Twentieth Century, William Heinemann Australia (Port Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 1991.

(With Vivian Smith) Sydney's Poems: A Selection on the Occasion of the City's One Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary 1842-1992, Primavera Press (Leichhardt, New South Wales, Australia), 1992.

(And author of introduction) John Shaw Neilson Selected Poems ("Modern Poets" series), Angus & Robertson (Pymble, New South Wales, Australia), 1993.

SIDELIGHTS: Australian poet Robert Gray employs a broad range of styles, from haiku-like three-line poems to his free verse tributes to nature and spiritualism. In his poem "A Testimony," he writes that there is "a substance to things, which is ungraspable, unbounded. It is divided and passed on, like a secret inheritance." Gray captures precise images, supple rhythms, humanity, and warmth in his poems, which are now enjoyed outside of his native Australia.

Gray grew up on the coast of New South Wales and moved to Sydney in the 1960s. He has worked at many jobs, nearly all of which are writing-related, while creating his poetry and editing and collecting the works of others. In addition to his poems of nature, he has written critically acclaimed narratives such as "Flames and Dangling Wire," about a trip to the dump, and "Diptych," which paints a portrait of his parents.

A Contemporary Poets contributor noted that "Gray's interest in Eastern religions is embodied in poems written directly about historical figures." These include "To the Master Dogen Zenji." "Other poems infuse Buddhism and Taoism into the Australian landscape," continued the writer. "An example is the long poem 'Dharma Vehicle' from Grass Script, in which episodes of landscapes merge with quotations or incidents from the lives of sages."

Writing in Quadrant, as quoted on the Duffy & Snellgrove Web site, Jamie Grant called "Flames and Dangling Wire" "an exceptional achievement. Few poets could have taken such an unpromising setting and drawn from it a connected sequence of ideas which takes in the theory of evolution, aspects of theology, nineteenth-century painting, and ideas about the future, before returning to the poignantly realised scene, somewhere in the unnamed person's past, which the final stanza sketches with deft economy."

In an interview with Southerly contributor Barbara Williams, also reprinted on the Duffy & Snellgrove Web site, Gray commented on "Diptych," revealing that his parents, "like the panels of a diptych, were forever separated while in proximity. In a way I was fortunate they were so different: I was able to see the inadequacies of both their extreme temperaments. Maybe that's the origin of the underlying attitude of my poems, which I've realized is a dialectical one." "I admire some things about both my parents," continued Gray. "All through my poems there is, subtly I hope, a consciousness of the interdependence of opposites, and an acceptance or reconciling of these. I will leave it to the critics, however, to discover the extent and the significance of this."

In reviewing New Selected Poems in Quadrant, Stephen McInerney named eight poems by Gray that he considers "as among the finest written in English in the last fifty years." They include "A Day at Bellingen," "Bringing the Cattle," "Bondi," "Curriculum Vitae," "The Life of a Chinese Poet," and "A Sight of Proteus." McInerney noted that the last "is an allegory of Gray's own life and work; it exemplifies and describes those qualities that will endear him to poetry lovers for generations."

With New Selected Poems, Gray has assembled individual collections, including The Skylight, which McInerney considered to be one of the greatest collections of poetry to be published in three decades. In a review of The Skylight for the Sydney Morning Herald, reprinted on the Duffy & Snellgrove Web site, Kevin Hart wrote of the underlying philosophy of this collection. Hart said that Gray's Taoism (a Chinese religious and philosophical system) brings "him to the view that the ego is an illusion, and that true happiness is to be found only 'in the contemplation of matter,' a position he associates with [Communist founder Karl] Marx."

McInerney commented on Gray's influence on the work of fellow poets Jamie Grant, Philip Hodgins, and Jemal Sharah, "though it seems unlikely that any poet attentive to natural landscapes in the future, be that landscape Australian or not, will be able to completely free himself from the echo of Gray's voice. Robert Gray is part of the landscape, like a pool of water that contains the landscape it is contained by."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Poets, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 2001.

Spurr, Barry, The Poetry of Robert Gray, Pascal Press (Glebe, New South Wales, Australia), 1995.

PERIODICALS

Quadrant, March, 2002, Stephen McInerney, review of New Selected Poems, p. 84.

ONLINE

Duffy & Snellgrove Web site,http://www.duffyandsnellgrove.com.au/ (November 8, 2004), "Reading Group and Teachers' Notes: The Poetry of Robert Gray."