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About the author
BRIGHT CROCKERY DAYS is edited by Mark Tredinnick, with contributions from Judith Beveridge, Peter Boyle, Robbie Coburn, Judith Nangala Crispin, Luke Fischer, John Foulcher, Tegan Gigante, Peter Goldsworthy, Lisa Gorton, Jamie Grant, Kevin Hart, Sarah Holland-Batt, Michael Hulse, Jean Kent, Geoffrey Lehmann, Geoff Page, Felicity Plunkett, Peter Ramm, Kate Rigby, Brigitte Ross, Lindsay Tuggle, Todd Turner and Jeffrey Wainwright.
About the book
Too often we leave our tributes too late. Robert Gray is one of the great poets of our age, known to thousands who read him for their HSC or VCE, and beloved of readers of poetry the world over. There is still time to thank Robert Gray for his life of letters and offer an appreciation of his poetry. This book is that tribute.
In BRIGHT CROCKERY DAYS, twenty-five writers and artists choose their favourite poem by Gray and speak about how it works and how it touches them, what it has meant to them, and why it matters so much to all of us. The book is an anthology, then, of much of Robert Gray’s best work, chosen by some who have known him; and it is a collection of trim essays that read those poems closely, elucidating and celebrating some of the poet’s best-known and most-loved pieces.
Although each essay examines an individual poem, contributors range freely across Gray’s work, placing it in the context of their own lives, and of the poet’s life and work, and speaking of the place each poem occupies in Australian culture, in contemporary literature, and in the poetic tradition at large.
The result is Robert Gray in three dimensions—a manifold, astute and affectionate reading of a great poet’s life and work through twenty-five poems those who knew him love best.
Commonly pigeonholed as a master imagist--which, of course, he is, non pareil--Robert is also one of our most meditative and philosophical poets. He has a painter's eye for life, but at the same time listens to it patiently, and thinks about it deeply--PETER GOLDSWORTHY
For more than 30 years Robert Gray has been one of the tiny number of wholly genuine poets whose every word I have wanted to read--MICHAEL HULSE
Seeking solace in the routines and rituals of daily life, I turn to Robert Gray, who reminds me with sparse eloquence: “ all that's important is the ordinary things.”--LINDSAY TUGGLE
I return to Robert’s work for sustenance, for instruction, and to be amazed. No-one has observed this world quite as exquisitely as Robert Gray.--JUDITH BEVERIDGE
A virtuoso of everyday language--PETER RAMM