Untold Lives & Later Poems

Untold Lives & Later Poems
AuthorRosemary Dobson
LanguageEnglish
GenrePoetry collection
PublisherBrandl and Schlesinger
Publication date2000
Publication placeAustralia
Media typePrint
Pages73 pp
Awards2001 The Age Book of the Year Book of the Year and Poetry Awards
ISBN0330362895

Untold Lives & Later Poems is a collection of poems by Australian poet Rosemary Dobson, published by Brandl and Schlesinger in 2000.

The collection contains 47 poems from a variety of sources, with some being published here for the first time.

The book won both The Age Book of the Year Book of the Year and Poetry Awards in 2001.

Contents

The poems in this collection are published in three sections:

1. Untold Lives, pp. 13-44
2. The News and Weather, pp. 45-68
3. Poems of a Marriage, pp. 69-73

  • "The Major-General"
  • "The Daughters of the Historian"
  • "Sometime Academic"
  • "Remembering Kitty"
  • "Private Soldier"
  • "The Widow"
  • "Autobiographical"
  • "Who?"
  • "Growing Up"
  • "Collects for the Days"
  • "The Green Years"
  • "The Sister in the Photograph"
  • "The Apparition"
  • "The 'Aunts'"
  • "Elena"
  • "The Young Companion"
  • "Executive"
  • "Photographer"
  • "Her Story"
  • "Memsahib's Memories"
  • "The Householder"
  • "Breakaway"
  • "The Anthropologist"
  • "The Pacifist"
  • "Clergyman"
  • "The News and Weather"
  • "Down Here by the River"
  • "The Artist, Lecturing"
  • "A Thought from George Herbert"
  • "A Thought from Isaak Walton"
  • "Readings"
  • "Cycladic Aquariums"
  • "As It Happens"
  • "A Letter From Another Country"
  • "Innocence, Lost"
  • Showgirls sequence
    • "Early Morning"
    • "Flowers in the Foyer"
  • Four poems from Ambae
    • "The Women of Ambae"
    • "The Community of the Unborn"
    • "A Letter from Ambae"
    • "The Buyers of Language"
  • "The Birdwatchers, Norfolk"
  • "The House in Summer"
  • "Empty Spaces"
  • "Reading Aloud"
  • "About Goodness"

Critical reception

In his review of the collection for The Canberra Times Geoff Page noted that "book has all the qualities which readers have come to expect from Dobson since her first book, In a Convex Mirror (1944), but it has them even more intensely." He also noted that the poems show "a quiet wit, a leisurely pace and an unforced capacity for compassion."

Awards

Author's notes

In her preface to this collection Dobson noted that the poems in the section "Untold Lives" had been previously published in a volume with that title in 1992. She also noted that in the 1992 publication she had written:

The poems in this series are each intended to encapsulate a life, or to present a life at one of its dramatic moments...They are "untold" in the sense that they are mostly about unnamed people whom I have known and who are not likely to have been "told" before.

Notes

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Untold Lives & Later Poems by Rosemary Dobson". National Library of Australia. Retrieved 1 November 2026.
  2. ↑ "Austlit — Untold Lives & Later Poems by Rosemary Dobson". Austlit. Retrieved 1 November 2026.
  3. 1 2 3 ""Poet wins Book of the Year award"". The Age, 25 August 2001, p12. ProQuest 363533531. Retrieved 1 November 2026.
  4. ↑ "Dobson Just Gets Better". The Canberra Times, 21 October 2000. ProQuest 1012331365. Retrieved 1 November 2026.
  5. ↑ ""Many Eyes on the Premier's Prize for this Worthy Range of Writers"". Herald Sun, 25 August 2001, p4. ProQuest 360256397. Retrieved 1 November 2026.