Roland Leach grew up on the beaches of Perth and this is reflected in many of his poems. He is the proprietor of Sunline Press and his latest venture is Cuttlefish, a magazine that features the artwork of an Australian artist, and includes poetry, flash fiction, and short fiction.
Kate Lilley is Associate Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at the University of Sydney. She is the author of Versary (Salt Publishing, 2002) and Ladylike (UWAP, 2012). Versary won the Grace Leven Prize and both books were shortlisted for the Kenneth Slessor Prize. Her new book, Tilt, is forthcoming with Vagabond in 2017. Kate is the daughter of Dorothy Hewett and Merv Lilley and the editor of Dorothy Hewett: Selected Poems (UWAP, 2010)
Merv Lilley was, in turn, a farm labourer, a fencer, a cane cutter, a wool presser, a merchant seaman, as well as a gunner in the Second World War. He made a substantial contribution to Australian literature, in the form of essays, short stories, true crime, autobiography and poetry. His two volumes of poetry are What About the People! (National Council of the Realist Writers Groups, 1962, with Dorothy Hewett) and Cautious Birds (Peter Jeffery, 1973). He was still writing and publishing poems in his nineties. Merv wrote Git Away Back! A Knockabout Life (Currency Press, 1983). His true crime narrative Gatton Man (McPhee Gribble) was published in 1994 and the broadly autobiographical The Channels (The Vulgar Press) in 2001.
Miriam Wei Wei Lo is of mixed Chinese-Malaysian and Anglo-Australian descent. She was born in Canada, grew up in Singapore, and has lived in Australia since she was 19 — mostly in WA. Miriam writes because she believes in meaning, beauty, and the power of words. Her writing has been published widely — online, in print journals, and in anthologies. She is a previous winner of the WA Premier’s Book Award for poetry. Miriam’s life is a complicated juggling act that includes parenting, gardening, writing, snorkelling, cooking, and being a pastor’s wife in a small country town. She also works (part-time) for Sheridan College, a start-up tertiary institution in Perth.
Gordon Mackay-Warna recorded his songs with Carl von Brandenstein and Tony Thomas, which appeared in the volume Taruru: Aboriginal Song Poetry from the Pilbara (Rigby, 1973).
Kenneth Mackenzie loved the bush and showed early promise as a musician. After attending a small state school at Pinjarra, he attended Guildford Grammar School and, in 1930, Muresk Agricultural College where he disliked the coursework but wrote, as Seaforth Mackenzie, the novel The Young Desire It (Jonathan Cape, 1937), with scenes reminiscent of his experiences at Guildford Grammar. He studied Arts/Law at UWA for a short time after.
Caitlin Maling grew up in Fremantle and now divides her time between Fremantle, Cervantes and Sydney. Her two poetry collections Conversations I’ve Never Had (2015) and Border Crossing (2017) have both been published by Fremantle Press.
Prior to her arrival in Australia, Annie H. Mark had contributed poems to the Australian press. She also wrote songs, several of which were put to music. ‘Flanders Poppies’, set to music by Sybil Pettit, first appeared in the London Evening News. Lyrics for other songs followed, including ‘King of the Sea’, ‘Norah Kildare’, and ‘Thy Smile’, all with music by Oscar Allon, and ‘I Saw Only You’ with music by Percy Elliott.
John Mateer moved with his parents to Perth from South Africa in 1989, prior to Nelson Mandela’s release from prison and the dismantling of Apartheid. Since the mid-1990s he has regularly published books of poems in Australia. From the mid-2000s his work has circulated more broadly in magazines, chapbooks and books, mostly in Europe and the UK.
Shane McCauley was born in Surrey, England in 1954, moving to Australia in 1959. He has had 8 books of poetry published, most recently Trickster (Walleah Press, 2015). McCauley has been a TAFE and university lecturer, and now conducts poetry workshops for the Out of the Asylum (OOTA) writers group in Fremantle.
David McComb was a songwriter and poet, a guitarist and singer for Australian band The Triffids. Born in Perth in 1962, he studied literature and journalism at Curtin University. With The Triffids he moved from Perth to the east coast and then to the UK in 1985, where The Triffids recorded the seminal album, Born Sandy Devotional (1986), followed by Calenture (1987) and Black Swan (1989). When the group disbanded, McComb went on to work with The Blackeyed Susans and later recorded a solo album, Love of Will (1994). David McComb died in Melbourne in 1999 at the age of 36. A selection of his poetry Beautiful Waste (Niall Lucy and Chris Coughran, eds) was published in 2009 to acclaim.
David McCooey is a prize-winning poet and critic who lived in Perth from 1970–90, and was educated at UWA. His latest collection of poetry is Star Struck (UWA Publishing, 2016). His previous collection, Outside (Salt Publishing, 2011), was shortlisted for a Queensland Literary Award and the ‘Best Writing’ Award for the Melbourne Prize for Literature. David is Deputy General Editor of the prize-winning Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature. His album of audio poetry, Outside Broadcast, was released as a digital download in 2013. He is Professor of Writing and Literature at Deakin University in Geelong, where he lives.
Philip Mead has lived in WA since 2009, where he teaches Australian literature at UWA. He is researching West Australian, including Indigenous, fiction and poetry and its representations of mining, Dantean underworlds, Lemurian pre-history and environmental change.
Mingkarlajirri did mustering on the De Grey Station. He was a nephew for Wapirrku and Kanturrpamarra. He died in the late 1920s.
Scott-Patrick Mitchell is an award-winning performance poet who moonlights as a journalist, fashion blogger, mentor and all-round creative. UK born and bred, SPM marries post avant poetics, sonic disruptions and an outrageous sense of style when performing. He has appeared and performed at Big Sky Writers Festival, National Young Writers Festival, Rosemount Australia Fashion Week, Perth Poetry Festival, FringeWorld, Artrage, Fremantle Festival, Feast and TiNA, the latter where he debuted his endurance works The 24 Hour Performance Poem and The 12 Minute Monomyth.
Rod Moran grew up in the Perth suburb of Rivervale. His sensibilities and poetry were deeply influenced by the Swan River and the Indian Ocean. Some of his earliest poetry appeared in the University of WA Press title Sandgropers, edited by Dorothy Hewett, for the 1973 Festival of Perth. Rod attended UWA for a time before moving to Melbourne, returning in 1987. The two poems in this anthology were collected in Moran’s award-winning volume — his fourth — The Paradoxes of Water: Selected and New Poems, 1970– 2015 (Salt Publishing, 2005).
Sally Morgan is an Indigenous writer and artist. She belongs to the Palyku people of the eastern Pilbara. For the last decade she has specialised in writing picture books and short chapter books for children and young people.
Born Colin Johnson at Cuballing, WA, in 1938, Mudrooroo left Perth for Melbourne in the 1950s. His first novel was Wild Cat Falling (A&R, 1965). His groundbreaking study of Aboriginal literature, Writing from the Fringe (Hyland House, 1991) was shortlisted for the WA Premier’s Award and the Stanner Award in 1992. His latest books are his own readings of Old Fellow Poems (ETT, 2015), Wild Cat Falling (Bolinda 2014), and An Indecent Obsession (ETT, 2015).
Edwin Greenslade Murphy (‘Dryblower’) was born in Castlemaine, Victoria, in 1866. He attended South Melbourne State School and was a plasterer, farmhand, and singer who joined the Coolgardie goldrush in 1893. For more than 40 years he was a weekly verse columnist for the Coolgardie Miner, the Kalgoorlie Sun, and the Perth Sunday Times. He published Jarrahland Jingles in 1908 and Dryblower’s Verses in 1926. He died in Perth in 1939.
Old Tumbler (Yanmi aka Walaburu) recorded his song with Carl von Brandenstein and Tony Thomas, which appeared in the volume Taruru: Aboriginal Song Poetry from the Pilbara (Rigby, 1973).
John Boyle O’Reilly was a Fenian who enlisted in the British Army in order to win support for the Irish cause. Upon discovery of his sedition he was court martialled, found guilty, and sentenced to 20 years’ penal servitude. He was transported to Western Australia in 1868 on the last convict ship to be sent to the Austr
alian colonies. He escaped imprisonment in WA and fled for the USA on an American whaling vessel in 1869.
F.W. Ophel worked as a miner, prospector and fossicker initially in South Australia and later in WA. He published verse in the Kalgoorlie Sun under the name ‘Prospect Good’ while he was working in the west. Sources record his name as Francis William or Frederick William in equal measure.
Waparla Pananykarra was Sandy Brown’s brother. He started as a stockman on De Grey Station, before switching to repairing and building windmills. He also worked with the well sinkers. He left the station during the 1946 strike but went back with the improved conditions in the 1960s and 70s. He later shared his time between Yandeyarra and 12 Mile just on the outskirts of Port Hedland. He passed away in Port Hedland in 1995.
Charmaine Papertalk-Green is a Yamaji poet, with traditional affiliations to the Wajarri, Badimia and Wilunyu, living in Geraldton. Charmaine writes about the lived reality of her community, family, and self.
Olive Pell was a librarian at UWA for 27 years from 1942 and also served as president of the Fellowship of Australian Writers (WA); of which she was an honorary life member. She also wrote radio features, short stories, plays for radio and television.
Glen Phillips was educated in WA country schools and Perth Modern School. In 1967, he graduated with a Master of Education degree from UWA and gained a PhD from Edith Cowan University in 2007. Phillips has served as national president of the Fellowship of Australian Writers and is an honorary professor of English at Edith Cowan University. He has published some 40 poetry collections in various countries. He founded the Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers’ Centre, was a founding member of the Peter Cowan Writers Centre and was director of the performance poetry group, Poetry in Motion. A recent book is Five Conversations With the Indian Ocean (2016, Platypus Press)
Jirlparurrumarra Piraparrjirri was also known as ‘Bobby Dazzler’. He did stockwork but was mostly an offsider to a well-sinking team. He was also an amateur boxer. He joined the strikers after 1946 but went back to station work with the improved conditions in the 1960s and 70s.
Marcella Polain was born in Singapore and has lived in WA since she was two years old. She is senior lecturer in the Writing program at Edith Cowan University, Perth.
Claire Potter is from Perth, WA. She has published two chapbooks, In Front of a Comma (Poets Union, 2006), N’ombre (Vagabond, 2007) and a full-length collection, Swallow (Five Islands, 2010). She lives in London.
Katharine Susannah Prichard was the author of many novels including Working Bullocks (1926), Coonardoo (1929), and the Goldfields Trilogy (1946-50), who also wrote short stories, plays, poems and non-fiction. In 1919 she married Victoria-Cross recipient and Gallipoli veteran, Hugo (Jim) Throssell, and they lived in the outer Perth suburb of Greenmount. For Prichard, literature and politics were always intertwined. Prichard was a founding member of the Australian Communist Party in 1920 and a member of its central committee. In 1934, she helped to set up the Australian Writers’ League, and was elected federal president the following year. After his grand tour of Europe and the death of his father in 1865, Henry Charles Prinsep visited the family Belvedere estate, arriving in Fremantle, WA, on 20 May, 1866. In October he met his future wife Charlotte Josephine, daughter of J.G. Bussell, and married her on 26 February 1868.
J.P. Quinton was born at Swan Districts Hospital in 1981. He grew up in Bassendean playing in and around the Swan River. Amongst other adventures, he has cycled from Perth to Melbourne, and Darwin to Perth. His first novel Bad Boy Boogie: The Adventures of Bon Scott is available on Amazon. He is now writing novels about hiking the Bibbulmun Track, The Shikoku Island Pilgrimage, The Te Araroa Trail, and the Pacific Crest Trail.
Emma Rooksby has spent much of her life in WA. She is currently based in Wollongong where she is working on a collection of poems about gum trees. Her first collection, ‘Time Will Tell,’ was published in Fremantle Poets 1: New Poets, edited by Tracy Ryan (Fremantle Press, 2010).
Zan Ross is a poet who likes to think of herself as being from Fremantle, WA, where she has lived for 25 years. Ross has had two collections published: B-Grade (Monogene Press, 2007) and En Passant (FACP, 2003). One chapbook has been issued, Je ne sais quoi (Vagabond Press, 2000). Ross has performed and taught in NSW, WA, and parts of Tasmania.
Tracy Ryan was born in Middle Swan in 1964, and grew up in WA, but she has spent periods of her adult life living overseas in the UK, Ireland and the USA. She began publishing poems and short fiction in her teens. She is the author of 8 volumes of poetry and four novels. She has received numerous awards for her work. Tracy lives at ‘Jam Tree Gully’, WA, with her husband, poet John Kinsella and their son.
Philip Salom was born in Bunbury, WA, and lived in the southwest and the wheatbelt until he was 20 — and later in Perth. His first 8 books were published in WA, 5 by (the then) Fremantle Arts Centre Press. He has won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize in London (twice), the WA Premier’s Prize (3 times) and the Newcastle Poetry Prize (twice). In 2003 he was awarded the Christopher Brennan Prize. His recent books are the trilogy Alterworld (Puncher & Wattman, 2014) and the novel Waiting (Puncher & Wattmann, 2016).
Kim Scott is a descendant of people living along the south coast of Western Australia prior to colonisation, and is proud to call himself Noongar. Kim began writing for publication when he became a teacher of English. His second novel, Benang: From the Heart, won the Miles Franklin Literary Award, the Kate Challis RAKA Award and the WA Premier’s Book Award. He is currently Professor of Writing at Curtin University, WA, in the School of Media, Culture and Creative Arts. Kim’s most recent novel That Deadman Dance, won him a second Miles Franklin. His poem ‘Kaya’ was commissioned for the Perth Stadium and written in consultation with the Whadjuk Working Party.
Jack Sorensen was born in WA. He began his working life as an orchardist on his family’s property in Maida Vale, Perth, and then worked as a shearer on stations in the Murchison, Gascoyne and Kimberley. In 1936 he returned to Perth and began work as a representative of the United Press, travelling throughout WA. In the middle of 1949 he began a sea voyage to Queensland, but died by his own hand on the ship in Sydney. He was buried in the Guildford Cemetery in the Upper Swan district where he grew up.
Julian Randolph Stow was born in Geraldton in 1935. He did a double major in French and English at UWA and lectured in English Literature at the universities of Adelaide, WA and Leeds. He was a storeman on the Umbalgari mission in 1957. In 1959 he was seconded to the Trobriand Islands, PNG, as assistant to Charles Julius, the government anthropologist, where he subsequently became a cadet patrol officer. Stow moved permanently to England, at first to Suffolk, his ancestral county, in 1969. From 1981 he lived in nearby Old Harwich. His novel To the Islands won the Miles Franklin Literary Award in 1958 and he received the Patrick White Award in 1979. As well as producing fiction and poetry, he wrote libretti for music theatre works by Peter Maxwell Davies. Randolph Stow died in 2010. He published three books of poetry in his lifetime, and a posthumous selection, The Land’s Meaning: New Selected Poems, was published in 2012 (FP).
Alf Taylor is a member of the Stolen Generations. He and his brother were removed from their family as infants and placed in the New Norcia Mission. Taylor only discovered his heritage when he left the mission at age 16 and searched for his family. As a young man, Taylor worked in the Perth and Geraldton areas as a seasonal farm worker, before joining the armed forces and living in several locations around Australia.
Andrew Taylor is the author of more than 15 books of poetry, the most recent being The Unhaunting (Salt, 2009), which was shortlisted for the 2009 WA Premier’s Book Awards, and Impossible Preludes (Margaret River Press, 2016). He is Professor Emeritus at Edith Cowan University, and Patron of the Peter Cowan Writers Centre.
Barbara Temperton lives in Albany, WA. Her poems are often inspired by Western Australia’s landscape and stories. Going Feral (FP, 2002) won the WA Premier’s Book Award for Poetry 2002.
Her most recent collection is Southern Edge (FP, 2009)
Ian Templeman was born in Perth in 1938. He was a painter, poet and talented athlete, who in 1972 became the first director of Fremantle Arts Centre, and the founder, 3 years later, of Fremantle Arts Centre Press. In 1990 he moved to Canberra to take up a senior role at the National Library of Australia. While in Canberra he also founded Molonglo Press and, later, Pandanus Books at the Australian National University, reflecting the rich contribution he made to culture and the arts throughout his lifetime. His books of poetry include Poems (Freshwater Bay Press, 1979), and These Glimpsed Interiors (Molonglo Press, 1997), which was shortlisted for the ACT Book of the Year Award and the WA Premier’s Literary Awards. His fifth collection, An Incomplete Memoir (Molonglo Press, 2001) was shortlisted for the 2001 WA Premier’s Literary Awards. In 2013 his final volume was released: The Watchmaker’s Imprint: Selected Poems (Tin Kettle Books). Templeman died in 2015.
W.C. Thomas was born in England in 1869. William Charles worked for Millars’ Timber and Trading Co. from 1898 to 1948 and was a clerk, journalist, industrial officer and poet. He wrote many articles on WA forests and the timber industry. He died in Perth in 1957.
Pat Torres belongs to three Indigenous Nations — Jabirr Jabirr, Nyul Nyul, Yawuru. She is a writer, artist, illustrator, community worker, health worker, educator, and Aboriginal administrator. Torres has a Bachelor of Arts and a Diploma of Education. In the following years, Torres was appointed as a Lecturer in the Centre for Aboriginal Studies at Curtin University of Technology teaching Aboriginal Studies to non-Indigenous students. Torres is an active Aboriginal community member and apart from writing her own stories, she is recording the Kimberley oral history.
The Fremantle Press Anthology of Western Australian Poetry Page 26