The Best 100 Poems of Gwen Harwood
John Harwood, ed.
Black Inc., 2014
Here is a new selection from that marvellously ardent poet, Gwen Harwood, a crafty voice that was heard from both Brisbane and Tasmania. In welcoming it, let me declare that Greg Kratzmann and I have a Harwood selection in print, but our book bounces back here from Manchester and must, as a result, be rather more expensive.
Accordingly, a new, local selection was called for, both to service the general reader and for classes of high school students. Black Inc has come up with one now, with a watery sepia dust jacket.
Greg’s and my choices from Harwood’s personal, plangent and witty range are different from that of the new volume, but that’s what happens to editors and their sensibilities.
The editing and production of this book raise interesting questions, which it does not seek to answer. Gwen Harwood’s son is cited on the dust jacket as being responsible for selecting and compiling it, but nowhere in the volume itself is he acknowledged: John Harwood must have been directly involved in this cloak of invisibility. Doubtless, then, he laboured to decide which were ‘the best 100’, but demurely so.
The Best 100 Poems is the challenging start to a title, as though the book in question had been edited by God, or by F.R. Leavis. On further burrowing, I found that Black Inc. has published two other such collections of Australian verse: one of Les Murray, chosen by himself, ands one of Dorothy Porter, selected by Andy Goldsmith. There’s an editorial policy here, with elegant variations.
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