Biography of Gwen Harwood

Gwen Harwood is one of Australia's most celebrated poets. Her wide-ranging work explores many themes, including the experiences of women, motherhood, life in rural Tasmania, and the dispossession of indigenous people in Australia. She has published over 420 poems, which have appeared in both literary journals and collections. Her poetry is also commonly studied in Australian schools and universities. In fact, several of her works were selected as required components of the high school literary curriculum in New South Wales.

Harwood grew up in Queensland, Australia. Her father, who appears in many of her poems, was an eccentric salesman and veteran. She also lived with her mother and maternal grandmother, and has stated that she "felt part of a long line of strong, self-reliant Australian women" (Australian Dictionary of Biography). Growing up, Harwood was a talented pianist with a love of both music and poetry. In 1941, she entered the novitiate but withdrew the next year; she then taught music. She and her husband married in 1945 and moved to Tasmania so that he could take up a professorship in English.

Harwood did not begin publishing poetry until her late thirties. For many years, she used multiple pseudonyms. This was partially due to sexism from poetry editors; many of her pseudonyms were male (Walter Lehmann, Francis Geyer, Timothy Kline), which Harwood deliberately chose because she noticed editors' preference for male writers. Other pseudonyms carried symbolic meaning (Miriam Stone purported to be a dissatisfied housewife and published poems relating to the stifling role of motherhood) or simply playful (W.V. Hagendoor was an anagram of Gwen Harwood). In August 1961, Harwood published a famous satirical poem that declared through acrostics her independence from all literary editors, showing her delight in comical works that also make a point about women's experiences.

In 1963, Harwood published her first collection under her own name, Poems. Later collections include Poems Volume Two (1968), The Lion's Bride (1981), Bone Scan (1988), and The Present Tense (1995). Two volumes of her correspondence with other poets have also been published as collections: Blessed City: Letters to Thomas Riddell, (1943) and A Steady Storm of Correspondence: Selected Letters of Gwen Harwood, (2001). In addition to her poetry, Harwood has written libretti (the text of operas) for multiple composers. Harwood has received multiple major literary awards, including the Robert Frost Medallion in 1977. After her death in 1996, a poetry prize was named after her; she was also inducted into Tasmania's Honour Roll of Women in 2005.