THE much admired Australian poet Fay Zwicky died on Sunday, the day after her Collected Poems was published in Perth where she had lived since the 1960s.
Her publisher at UWA Press, Terri-Ann White, said the poet, whose 84th birthday would have been on Tuesday, had been delighted to hold a copy of the book in her hands last week. She had been ill for a long time.
Zwicky was born in Melbourne and embarked on a career as a pianist before moving to Perth and teaching English at the University of Western Australia in the mid-'60s. She won the Patrick White Award in 2005 and the New South Wales Premier's Award for poetry in 1982 for Kaddish and Other Poems and in 2007 for Picnic. She also wrote essays and short stories
Reviewing Picnic for Fairfax Media, Heather Cam wrote: "Poems and Things sets out Zwicky's poetic credo: 'Be precise. . ./ about the thing/but reticent/about the feeling', only then it seems can the poet 'strengthen morality,/refine culture, set heaven and earth/in motion, call up necessary/spirits of the dead'."
Novelist and poet David Malouf said for his generation Zwicky was one of the absolutely essential voices.
"She was sparky, unwilling to take things lightly. She had a wonderful scepticism and sense of the need for a poet to speak things as they were but always with a sense of humour and the grasp of how a poem was made, to ensure it was unique experience."
Poet Chris Wallace-Crabbe recalled that Zwicky had been a little bit ahead of him as a student at the University of Melbourne.
"She had a vivid personality and seemed to be torn between music and poetry." He said her poetry was very interesting with sharp edges. "She didn't go for lyric sweetness. I genuinely admired her and her poetry."
- The Collected Poems of Fay Zwicky, edited by Lucy Dougan and Tim Dolin, is published by UWA Press at $29.99.
