Gig Ryan | |
|---|---|
| Born | Elizabeth Anne Martina Ryan 5 November 1956 [1] |
| Occupation | Poet Critic [2] |
| Nationality |  Australian |
| Education | La Trobe University (B.A.) [3] University of Sydney University of Melbourne [1] Monash University (Ph.D.) |
| Notable works | Selected Poems (2012) |
| Relatives | Peter John Ryan (father) |
Gig Ryan, born Elizabeth Anne Martina Ryan, is an Australian poet. She is a recipient of the Christopher Brennan Award.
Ryan was born in Leicester, England in 1956. [4] This was when her father, Australian surgeon Peter John Ryan, had taken the family to England to gain his surgical qualifications (FRCS). After they returned in 1957, Ryan grew up in Melbourne, and was educated in the Catholic school system.
In 1993, Ryan earned a B.A. in Latin and Ancient Greek, [3] and in 2020, she earned her doctorate in Creative writing at Monash University. [5]
At eighteen, Ryan won the Victorian 1974 Maryborough Prize, and published her first poems. Ryan lived in Sydney 1978–1990, and later became poetry editor of The Age newspaper (1998–2016). Before moving to Sydney, she co-founded a Melbourne women writers' magazine Luna in 1974, [3] which she then worked on until '78. [6] For the Saturday Age, Ryan selected "a new short poem" every week. [2] She has also recorded her songs with the bands 'Disband' and 'Driving Past'.
For her work that "links feminine silence with masculine violence", Ryan has been noted as a "remarkable feminist poet", [7] and "the voice of radical feminist protest." [6] In a 1981 review of her debut collection The Division of Anger, R.A. Simpson compared Ryan to John Ashbery and Frank O'Hara for her "Action Painting"-based approach. [8] Another essay praised Ryan's work––or the "fascinating poems" [9] in her 2011 New and Selected Poems in particular––for providing a modern "lens to the psychic and affective terrain of interiority in politically saturated times". [10] Her poetry is recognised as being "readily to hand in the vernacular", often making "use of found tags and 'hip' phrases". [11]
Ryan's speech at the 2010 Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize presentation ranked fourth on Overland's "Top Ten Poetic Moments of 2011". [12] An excerpt from her speech includes:
"Poetry is our response to the world, but it’s also the thing we poets find the most taxing, the best of engaging our brains. Ideally – like all good art – it should make us think." –– Ryan, from 'Some Random Notes About Contemporary Poetry' [13]
In 1998, Ryan gave a eulogy at a memorial mass for the poet John Forbes at St Brigid's Church in Melbourne. [14] In 2016, on the occasion of her sixtieth birthday, seventeen poets came together to contribute a couple lines each to a poem. The poem was edited by Corey Wakeling, who in the "Afterword", noted that Ryan's poetry "cites the many philosophical and political problems of the contemporary world, yet has the contrary aesthetic reputation of untimeliness, ambiguity, angularity, even defiance." [15]
In her essay titled "Australian Poetry Now", poet Bronwyn Lea named Ryan among the frontrunners of "innovative and experimental" Australian poetry. [16] In her review of New and Selected Poems, Ann Vickery looked at a possibility that the collection would become a staple "among the bookshelves of local poetry lovers" and, not long after, "of a more international audience", noting that it compiled "some of the best Australian poetry written over the past thirty years." [13] The collection was published by Bloodaxe as Selected Poems in 2012, making it her first UK publication. [17] Later, Ryan's second collection Manners of an Astronaut, first published in 1984, was published in the UK as part of the Shearsman Library in 2018. [18]
Alongside Panda Wong, Ryan served as a guest editor for the Best of Australian Poems anthology in 2023. [19]
Her book Pure and Applied won the 1999 C. J. Dennis Prize for Poetry and Heroic Money was shortlisted for the 2002 Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry. New and Selected Poems was shortlisted for the 2012 Prime Minister's Award for Poetry and the 2012 ASAL award, and winner of the 2012 Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry. [3] [20]
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Artists | |
| Other | |
