Alan Wearne

Of his poetry, Wearne notes in an interview with Bonnie Cassidy, “I like raiding this country for its potential to write about. I do like the idea of being moderately uncompromising, if such a thing exists, in the Australian potential of my poetry. Not dogmatically so, but if someone requires footnotes to understand my piece, because they’re not from this country, well, tough. It’s got to stand on its own feet.”

The first volume of another verse novel, The Lovemakers, was published by Penguin Australia in March 2001 and won the NSW Premier’s Prize for Poetry (Kenneth Slessor Award), the NSW Premier’s Prize Book of the Year and the Arts Queensland Judith Wright Calanthe Award for Australian Poetry. In February 2004, The Lovemakers Book Two was published by ABC Books and co-won The Foundation for Australian Literary Studies’ Colin Roderick Award and H. T. Priestly Medal. In early 2008 The Australian Popular Songbook was published by Giramondo Publishing and later that year Shearsman Books of Exeter, England, published The Lovemakers in a 686-page single volume.

Alan Wearne teaches poetry at the University of Wollongong, lives part of the year in Fremantle, and considers himself a Melbourne poet living in exile.