Carolina Caliaba's Profile

Radclyffe Hall was a wealthy ‘invert’ as she liked to call herself, (following the lead of sexologist Havelock Ellis), who made it her mission to tell the world about her kind. Had she not done so, no-one would be reading her now. She believed she was a genius, tried to write good old-fashioned novels, wore men’s clothes, was deeply conservative, and considered herself ‘married’ to her monocle-sporting partner, Una Troubridge. They bred dachshunds, lived in Mayfair, and disapproved of both Socialism and Modernism in equal measure. Their hobby was contacting spirits by ouija board.

When the WELL was published, the Daily Express reviewer wrote: ‘I would rather give a healthy boy or healthy girl a phial of prussic acid than this novel.’

instead of say, the Beats, and, here in Australia, John Tranter’s fabricated ‘generation of 68', or New York school or Language poetry, post graduate and undergraduate poetry writing students and beginners are reading Romantic and Victorian poetry again? Certainly a lot of pre-1950s poetry seems to be emulated by the younger generation here. Abounding as it is, not all of it lifts off. Kris Hemensley called these poets "exponents of a fastidiously constructed and polished lyricism current now in new Australian poetry."

Kenneth Slessor prize for poetry in the 2009 New South Wales premier's literary awards:



XYZ’s book…. “is a wonderful example of the power of the lyric to

slow time down to intense, expanded moments of seeing and feeling.In measured poems of decorum and grace, XYZ weighs beauty against terror, art against the unspeakable, love against death. The exquisite music of these poems comes from a perfect mastery of form that is never content merely to deploy traditional templates like the sonnet or the sestina, but converts them into something that is contemporary, arresting and XYZ’s own.”