Geoff Page

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Geoffrey Donald Page OAM (born 7 July 1940) is an Australian poet, translator, teacher and jazz enthusiast.

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He has published 22 collections of poetry, as well as prose and verse novels. Poetry and jazz are his driving interests, and he has also written a biography of the jazz musician Bernie McGann. He organises poetry readings and jazz events in Canberra.

Life

Geoff Page was born in Grafton, New South Wales, and studied at the University of New England. [1] Sir Earle Page, who was briefly Prime Minister of Australia, was his grandfather.

Career

Page has held residencies at numerous academic, military and political institutions, including Edith Cowan University, Curtin University, the Australian Defence Force Academy, and the University of Wollongong. From 1974 to 2001 Page was head of the English department at Narrabundah College, a secondary college in Canberra. He retired from teaching in 2001.

He has travelled widely, talking on Australian poetry in Switzerland, Britain, Italy, Singapore, China, the United States and New Zealand. His poetic style ranges from lyrical to satirical, from serious to humorous – and often addresses his concerns about contemporary society and politics. Judith Beveridge writes that "Page is a humanely satirical poet. He lets us view our condition with a fusion of the comic and the tragic." [2]

Page is the poetry reviewer for ABC Radio's The Book Show and, for a decade before that, its Books and Writing program. [3]

Page curates the Poetry at the Gods and Jazz at the Gods series at the Gods Cafe in Canberra. [4]

He was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia in the 2023 Australia Day Honours. [5]

Style

Australian poet John Tranter in his 1983 review of The Younger Australian Poets (edited by Robert Gray and Geoffrey Lehmann) wrote of Page:

He is not a self-promoter, and his modest output has been inadequately represented in recent anthologies, as the editors of this one quite properly point out. His poetry has been influenced loosely by the American William Carlos Williams. In general, the spare precision of Williams' short lines is a good preventive against galloping garrulity, and in Page's hands it delivers a dry and particularly Australian accent and a thoughtful movement from phrase to phrase. The short line, as a model, can be overdone: 'of 3 a.m.' is an example that does little for me. Page's technique is low-key – his French and American influences are invisible in the texture of his localised speech – yet it enables him to range widely among language and experience. [6]

Awards and nominations

Bibliography

I look up Wikipedia
and find instead the world,
the way it tends to ramify,
its openness to doubt,
the "more work needed" here and there,
"citations to be added",
an absence of the absolute,
the comfort of the useful
while everything is slipping sideways
and yet it mainly works.
Even those two testaments
were written by successive hands
imagining dictation.
The world, it's plain, is inexact –
and so with Wikipedia.
In love with the provisional
it's planning to embrace the earth
and tweak it into sense.

Geoff Page in The Weekend Australian,
31 May/1 June 2014, Review, p. 20

Poetry

Collections
List of poems
TitleYearFirst publishedReprinted/collected
Jimmy James1996Page, Geoff (January–February 1996). "Jimmy James". Quadrant. 40 (1–2 [323]): 71.
The horizontals1996Page, Geoff (March 1996). "The horizontals". Quadrant. 40 (3): 32.
The second law1996Page, Geoff (March 1996). "The second law". Quadrant. 40 (3): 32.
Secular rites1996Page, Geoff (1996). The secret. Kew, Vic.: William Heinemann Australia. "Secular rites". Australian Poetry Library.
The shovel1996Page, Geoff (July–August 1996). "The shovel". Quadrant. 40 (7–8): 20.

Criticism and anthologies

Book reviews

DateReview articleWork(s) reviewed
2013Page, Geoff (April 2013). "[Untitled review]". Australian Book Review . 350: 40.Emery, Brook (2012). Collusion. St Kilda, Vic.: John Leonard Press.
2013Page, Geoff (April 2013). "Lords of nothing". Australian Book Review . 350: 65.Rieth, Homer (2013). 150 motets. North Fitzroy, Vic.: Black Pepper.
2014Page, Geoff (September 2014). "[Untitled review]". Australian Book Review . 364: 42.Turner, Todd (2014). Woodsmoke. North Fitzroy, Vic.: Black Pepper.

Memoirs and nonfiction

Works in progress

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References

  1. Poetry Foundation: Geoff Page
  2. Back page blurb, Agnostic Skies, Melbourne, Five Islands Press, 2006
  3. Geoff Page's Seriatum
  4. The Gods Cafe Special Events Archived 21 September 2011 at the Wayback Machine Accessed 30 December 2011
  5. "Mr Geoffrey Donald PAGE". It's an Honour. Retrieved 25 January 2023.
  6. John Tranter: Reviewer
  7. "Page wins 2017 ACU Poetry Prize". Books+Publishing. 1 September 2017. Retrieved 26 September 2020.
  8. "Page wins 2020 ACU Prize for Poetry". Books+Publishing. 22 September 2020. Retrieved 26 September 2020.