Suite for Percy Grainger: a biography

Background: Following the publication of my first book 'marionette', this represents my second book-length exploration of the possibilities enabled by the merging of biography writing and the poetic form. The creative work provides a counterpart to my scholarly investigations of similar themes. 'Suite for Percy Grainger' aligns with similar biographical experimental works by such authors as Michael Ondaatje, Susan Howe and Dennis Cooley. Contribution: The poems in 'Suite for Percy Grainger' are experimental and innovative and demonstrate, through creative practice, ideas and concepts with which I am extensively engaged through critical research--i.e. exploring the poetic medium as a potential site for negotiating non-fiction content in new and exciting ways. This book offers new knowledges relating to non-fiction and biographical writing, by exploring the life, music and philosophies of composer Percy Grainger, and how his enigmatic voice can be communicated through the complexities of poetic writing. While the poems explore such concepts through practice, an essay at the end of the book critically contextualises these ideas. Significance: The book has so far been reviewed favourably in leading Australian literary journal Cordite Poetry Review and Mascara Literary Review (see attached files). I received the Felix Meyer Scholarship ($7500) for the study of Poetry, from the University of Melbourne to fund a trip to White Plains, New York, to research in the archives of Grainger House (where Grainger lived and worked for his last 40 years), and also a Varuna Residency Fellowship to support the writing of the manuscript. Further, three poems from the book were recognised through major awards: 'Arrival Platform Humlet' won the 2014 International Peter Porter Poetry Prize; '1961' won 2nd place in the 2013 National Val Vallis Award; and 'Anarchival' was longlisted for the Vice Chancellor's University of Canberra Poetry Award and published in the 2014 anthology.