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Biography

Judith Bishop was born in Melbourne, Australia in 1972. Her poems have won numerous awards, including the prestigious Marten Bequest Travelling Scholarship in Poetry (2002-2004), an Academy of American Poets Prize (2004), and the Australian Book Review Poetry Prize (2006). She has postgraduate degrees in French literature (MPhil., University of Cambridge), Writing (M.F.A. (Poetry), Washington University in St Louis) and Linguistics (PhD., University of Melbourne). Her PhD dissertation was the first doctoral-length study of intonation in an Australian Aboriginal language. She has published short translations from the Swiss-born French poet Philippe Jaccottet and French poet and essayist Gérard Macé, and she is working on a book-length translation from Gérard Macé. She is Principal Linguistic Officer at Appen Butler Hill in Sydney.


Event

Book cover of Event (by Judith Bishop)Judith’s first book of poems, Event, is available for purchase through the publisher's site, InBooks (email:orders@
inbooks.com.au),
Amazon.com or
Amazon.co.uk.


Reviews of Event

Peter Coghill, review of Event in Five Bells, Autumn 2008: Quotation:

"... delicacy of phrasing, form and outlook is the most distinctive feature of Bishop's writing and allows intimate experiences and perceptions to live for the reader..."

Jaya Savige, "Elemental exhalations" (review of Event with other recent books of poetry),  The Australian Literary Review, March 5, 2008. Quotation:

 "... Bishop's poems make you want to stand up and shout them aloud in a tempest, spurred by the knowledge you would be speaking its elemental tongue. [...] [I]t is one of the best first collections of poetry published here since Wright's The Moving Image in 1946."

Oliver Dennis, "In Brief", Times Literary Supplement, 16-23 November, 2007. Quotation: 

"... her poetry's quiet humility counts as one of its foremost attractions. An authentic and unsentimental belief in the capacity for tenderness between creatures lies at the heart of Bishop's writing." 

Rose Lucas, 'Behind the shining paint', Australian Book Review, n. 296, November 2007. Quotation:

 "... Bishop's poetry creates an aesthetic surface which mimics the stasis of death and also harbours the 'flutter in the flank', the pulse of possibility visible to the attentive reader-observer."

Geoff Page, on the ABC Radio National Book Show , 8 November, 2007.


Favourite Links

http://world-bird-sanctuary.blogspot.com/

A blog with posts by Stephanie Pippin, a talented poet from St Louis, Missouri, and videos of birds at a Missouri bird sanctuary.


 Archive - Publications

'T/here' in The Best Australian Poems 2008, ed. Peter Rose, Black Inc.

Translated extract from Gérard Macé on mime, in HEAT 18, 'The Library of Fire', December 2008.

Three new poems ('Poetry', 'Snow', 'Circadia'), and a 'prose sculpture' poem ('Defense Mechanism') in English and French translation in La Traductière , n.26, 2008.

Review of Inger Christiansen's Butterfly Valley: A Requiem (New Directions) in the current Sequence (II) issue of Verse magazine.

'Interval' in The Best Australian Poems 2007, ed. Peter Rose, Black Inc.

'Still Life with Cockles and Shells' in The Best Australian Poetry 2007, ed. John Tranter, U.Q.P.

Two new poems in Salt magazine's first online issue.

In the French poetry and prose issue of Verse magazine :

  • A translated extract of Philippe Jaccottet's Truinas: le 21 avril 2001 (and an excellent essay by Kevin Hart on Jaccottet)
  • A review of Gérard Macé's Wood Asleep (Bloodaxe Books).

A translated chapter of Philippe Jaccottet's book Rilke, in Agenda magazine (U.K.), v. 42, n. 3 - 4.

 

News

Judith's poem 'Openings' has shared the inaugural 2011 Peter Porter Poetry Prize with Tony Linterman's 'Self-portrait at Sixty'. This is the second time Judith has won the prize (previously named the Australian Book Review Poetry Prize). The two winning poems were selected from almost 500 entries.


New and Recent Publications

'Openings' was published in the March issue of the Australian Book Review.

'The Blind Minotaur' was published in The Best Australian Poems 2010, ed. Robert Adamson, Black Inc.


Other Publications

Translated extract from Gérard Macé, L'art sans paroles (Art without words) , in Verse magazine 2009 (vol. 24, ns.1 -2). Macé's accomplishments have been recognised most recently by his being awarded the 2008 Grand Prize for Poetry by the Académie Française.

Poem, "Arrival", in the Australian Book Review, 316/56, 2009.

Poem, "In the Somme", in The Best Australian Poems 2009, ed. Robert Adamson.

Poem, "Poet, Painter" in La Traductiere, n.27, 2009. The volume includes an artwork inspired by this poem by Jean-François Caillarec. Also in this volume, Judith's translations of poems by Anne Bihan, Claude Darbellay and Louise Dupré.


Archive - Events

Dust Poems 2009
Judith took part in a Red Room Company project, Dust Poems, which culminated in readings of the Dust Poems and other truck- and poetry-related events on March 21, 2009, at the Overflow in Sydney's Olympic Park. For more details see: http://dustpoems.com/

Poets Paint Words 2009
Judith took part in the 2009 PPW events at Newcastle Regional Art Gallery and the Sydney Writers Festival.

14th August 2008 -- Event was shortlisted in the Queensland Premier's Literary Awards for the Judith Wright Calanthe Award for Poetry. Read the judges' report here .

8th August 2008 -- Event was shortlisted in the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards for the C. J. Dennis Prize for Poetry. Read the judges' report here.

 4th August 2008 -- Event was shortlisted for the Association for the Study of Australian Literature Mary Gilmore Prize for a first book of poetry. Read the judges' report here.

Fellowship of Australian Writers Anne Elder Award
Event
was awarded the 2008 Anne Elder prize for the best first book of poetry published in the preceding year. See Kris Hemensley's (Collected Works Bookstore, Melbourne) comments on the award here.

Poem short-listed for the 2008 Australian Book Review Poetry Prize
Judith's shortlisted poem, titled 'T/here', appeared in the March issue of ABR.

Festival franco-anglais de poésie (8 - 12 October 2008)
Judith took part in the Melbourne stage of the French-English Poetry Festival,  hosted by the Australian Poetry Centre in Melbourne.

6th Australian Poetry Festival (5, 6, 7 September 2008)
Judith read from Event and new poems in the session 'Lines of Development: The Emerging Tradition'.

The International Association for Philosophy and Literature conference (30 June - 6 July 2008)
Judith participated in a panel entitled 'Local Memory, Global Amnesia - Art, Community and Remembering'. Her paper was titled "'Another perspective on what's nearest to me': French poets and the evolution and memory of the Chinese script.

 

 

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