How sad — author Dorothy Porter has died, aged 54. A poet who (literally) spoke with a broad Strine accent and wrote in a variety of voices, whose verse novels (Akhenaten, Monkey’s Mask, What A Piece Of Work) were as much about character as about plot.
I encountered her a couple of times when she gave guest lectures at RMIT University. Hearing her tell stories, discuss the mechanics of writing poetry and novels, reminded me that poetry is one of the earliest forms of verbal communication among humans and that sharing poetry is one of the most powerful ways we have of forging social connections.
We need more writers like Dorothy Porter — women who will push boundaries, applying both passion and intellectual rigor to reinventing their craft, women who write convincingly in a range of tones and styles.
Rosemary Sorensen’s obituary in The Australian describes Porter’s literary style and mentions the difficulty some publishers had in categorising her work.
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