Paul Kane is an American poet, from rural upstate New York. He attended Yale University and, after a decade of working various jobs, including carpentry, landscaping and bookselling, went to Melbourne University as a Fulbright Scholar to write a study of Australian poetry (later published as Australian Poetry: Romanticism and Negativity). He subsequently returned to Yale and completed a doctorate in 1990. He has published five volumes of poems; a poetry/music CD, Seven Catastrophes in Four Movements (with Katie O’Looney); and eight other books, including Ralph Waldo Emerson: Collected Poems and Translations (co-edited with Harold Bloom) and the recently re-issued Poetry of the American Renaissance. He continues to work in the area of Australian literature and serves as poetry editor of Antipodes, artistic director of the Mildura Writers Festival, and general editor of The Braziller Series of Australian Poets. In 2013 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by La Trobe University for his contributions to Australian culture. His other awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Mellon Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Bogliasco Foundation. In 2004-07, he built a house in country Victoria in Australia, where he and his wife, Tina, spend time each year. He teaches at Vassar College in the States and lives in Warwick, New York.
Paul Kane writes:
This Tapa Notebook was given me by Michele Leggott after I gave a talk at the University of Auckland on 10 August 2011. That talk, “Leading a Double Life: The Poetics of Home in the U.S. and Australia,” underwrites my general approach to the Notebook: a series of images with commentary and analysis. I have used postcards and photographs to build up a memoir that weaves together several thematic strands which emerge over the course of the Notebook (some having to do with power and authority, revolution and violence; others having more personal, poetic and even humorous colorations). The idea is to present the reader or viewer with portraits, vignettes and narratives that illuminate some of my experience within the context of my time. Above all, I hope it provides an enjoyable encounter.
I handed the notebook back to Michele in person when she attended the Mildura Writers Festival in July 2013.
Full text of Paul Kane's Tapa Notebook [PDF: 8MB]
Links
Photo:
Paul Kane. Photo credit: Florence Minnis. |
Photo: Paul Kane, Michele Leggott and Lisa Jacobson at Mildura Writers Festival, July 2013.
Photo credit: Paul Lambeth.
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