Lisa Gorton (born 1972) is an Australian poet, novelist, literary editor and essayist.[1] She is the author of three award-winning poetry collections: Press Release,[2]Hotel Hyperion,[3] and Empirical.[4] Her second novel, The Life of Houses, received the NSW Premier's People's Choice Award for Fiction[5] and the Prime Minister's Literary Award for Fiction (shared).[6] Gorton is also the editor of Black Inc's anthology Best Australian Poems 2013.[7]
Education
Gorton was educated at the University of Melbourne and at University of Oxford.[8] At Oxford, as a Rhodes Scholar, Gorton completed an MPhil in Renaissance Literature and a DPhil on John Donne.[8] She received the John Donne Society Award for Outstanding Publication in Donne Studies.[9]
She is the granddaughter of the former Prime Minister John Gorton.[10]
Writing
Gorton's poetry has been widely anthologised, including in The Turnrow Anthology of Contemporary Australian Poetry,[15]The Best Australian Poems series (2008,[16] 2009,[17] 2010,[18] 2011,[19] 2012,[20] 2014,[21] 2015[22]), Contemporary Australian Feminist Poetry,[23] the Anthology of Australian Prose Poetry,[24] the Poetry Magazine May 2016 selection of Australian poetry, edited by Robert Adamson, with photographs by Juno Gemes,[25] and online anthologies Poetry International[8] and lyrikline.[26] Her poetry can also be found online at Cordite magazine.[27]
Gorton is interested in ekphrastic poetry. She has composed a series of poems for Izabela Pluta's artist's book Figures of Slippage and Oscillation.[33] She has also written ekphrastic poems for the catalogue of the 2010 Adelaide Biennial of Contemporary Art Before and After Science,[34] for the exhibition Conversations in Ellipsis,[35] and for the Melbourne Now limited edition volume from the National Gallery of Victoria.[36]
Gorton gave a poetry reading at TEDx Sydney in 2010.[37]
Awards and recognition
Gorton's awards for poetry include the Victorian Premier's Prize for Poetry,[29] the Vincent Buckley Poetry Prize,[9] and the Philip Hodgins Memorial Medal.[38] Her novel The Life of Houses was awarded the New South Wales Premier's People's Choice Award, and the Prime Minister's Fiction Prize.[5]
Her poetry books have also been shortlisted in the Prime Minister's Prize for Poetry,[39] the Mary Gilmore Poetry Prize,[40] the Melbourne Prize for Literature Best Writing Award,[40] and the NSW Premier's Poetry Award.[41]
Jessica Wilkinson, poet and editor of Rabbit magazine, interviewed Gorton about her poetry collection Empirical, noting Lisa's interest in "how a feeling for place originates".[50] In the Sydney Review of Books, poet and critic Michael Farrell suggests that Gorton's poetry collection Empirical offers "models of 3D thought", remarking that "Gorton reanimates - and translates - historical textual materials into contemporary poetry", and that her work "performs as an antidote to nationalist ideology".[51] In The Sydney Morning Herald, James Antoniou writes: "an important voice is breaking through here: assured, polyphonic and, for all its quietness, visionary".[52]
On The Life of Houses
In the Sydney Review of Books, Kerryn Goldsworthy writes about Gorton's debut novel The Life of Houses:[53] "One of the main reasons for Gorton's status as a highly respected, prize-winning Australian poet is her unique and personal angle of vision on the world. It's something that, as Auden surmises, cannot be taught…For Gorton it seems not so much a matter of finding le mot juste as of making something entirely new: not merely choosing the word or naming the non-verbal thing it represents, but of using metaphor to create a new and separate third entity in which a word or phrase brings an inchoate, intangible feeling, sensation or memory out of the shadows and into the sunlight of consciousness."
Works
Poetry
Individual poems have been published in HEAT,[54]Poetry,[55]The Best Australian Poems 2008,[16]The Best Australian Poems 2009,[17]The Best Australian Poems 2010,[18] and The Best Australian Poems 2012.[20]
