New and Selected Poems – Gig Ryan (Giramondo Publishing)
Gig Ryan’s poems have exerted an influence over two generations of writers and readers since the publication of her award-winning collection Division of Anger (1981). An important figure in Australian poetry, her work is studied in high schools and universities, and represented in anthologies, but has not been available as a whole until now. New and Selected Poems is Ryan’s choice of her poems from the last thirty years, and includes new poems written since the publication of her previous collection.
Author biography
Gig Ryan has published six collections of poetry, including Pure and Applied, which won the 1999 Victorian Premier’s Prize for Poetry, and Heroic Money which was shortlisted for the 2002 NSW Premier’s Prize for Poetry. The recipient of writers’ fellowships and residencies from the Australia Council, she is a distinguished poetry critic, and poetry editor for The Age newspaper.
Judges’ comments
This comprehensive representation of Gig Ryan's poetry over the last thirty years also includes a significant number of new poems. It is characterized by originality of technique and a coherent and uncompromising vision of life. Gig Ryan is a late modernist who toys with rhythms and breaks them. Her language can seem as dislocated as her subject matter, extending as it does from disconsolate longing through disillusionment to a probing of the nature of suffering, and it can be, by turns, forlorn, exultant and wry. A many-coloured, moody book that will satisfy every kind of reader.