This book of memoir essays examines the relationship between AD Hope and then fledgling writer, Catherine Cole. Based on extensive research in the National Library and other Hope research archives, it explores the ways in which Australian poetry and the creative imagination can develop through the roles of mentor/mentee. The book contains essays on place, national identity, love, memory and time, and forgetting. It also includes a large collection of previously unpublished letters between AD Hope and Cole.
RESEARCH CONTRIBUTION
The book is structurally innovative in the ways in which it combines a number of elements such as essays, bildungsroman, epistolary communication and reflections to trace developments in Australian poetry and culture. It was widely noted as a new model for literary studies, offering new insights into Hope’s work and his relationship with a previous generation of major Australian writers.
RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE
Hope scholars such as Peter Pierce, who wrote, ‘Cleverly crossing boundaries of genre, Cole's book is arresting from its first moment until its plangent last words’; David Brooks and Kevin Hart wrote extensively and favourably about the book. The book also received excellent reviews in ‘The Age’, ‘The Australian’, ‘Sydney Morning Herald’, ‘Australian Book Review’, ‘The Canberra Times’, ‘Courier Mail’ and ‘The Mercury’ as well as on-line. It has been widely discussed on ABC Radio National including Margaret Throsby’s ‘The Book Show’. It has been set in tertiary curricula in Australia and led to invitations for the author to international (UK and USA) and national conferences and writers’ festivals.
Publication Details
Catherine Cole. The Poet Who Forgot, University of Western Australia Press, Perth, 2008, 272p.
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RESEARCH IMPACT STATEMENT
RESEARCH BACKGROUND
This book of memoir essays examines the relationship between AD Hope and then fledgling writer, Catherine Cole. Based on extensive research in the National Library and other Hope research archives, it explores the ways in which Australian poetry and the creative imagination can develop through the roles of mentor/mentee. The book contains essays on place, national identity, love, memory and time, and forgetting. It also includes a large collection of previously unpublished letters between AD Hope and Cole.
RESEARCH CONTRIBUTION
The book is structurally innovative in the ways in which it combines a number of elements such as essays, bildungsroman, epistolary communication and reflections to trace developments in Australian poetry and culture. It was widely noted as a new model for literary studies, offering new insights into Hope’s work and his relationship with a previous generation of major Australian writers.
RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE
Hope scholars such as Peter Pierce, who wrote, ‘Cleverly crossing boundaries of genre, Cole's book is arresting from its first moment until its plangent last words’; David Brooks and Kevin Hart wrote extensively and favourably about the book. The book also received excellent reviews in ‘The Age’, ‘The Australian’, ‘Sydney Morning Herald’, ‘Australian Book Review’, ‘The Canberra Times’, ‘Courier Mail’ and ‘The Mercury’ as well as on-line. It has been widely discussed on ABC Radio National including Margaret Throsby’s ‘The Book Show’. It has been set in tertiary curricula in Australia and led to invitations for the author to international (UK and USA) and national conferences and writers’ festivals.