Shortlist year: 2014
Shortlist category: Poetry
Published by: University of Queensland Press
1953 is a unique verse narrative composed of monologues and verse portraits. Together, these build towards the story of an Australian town, Eurandangee, and its people on a particular summer’s day in the 1950s. The poems reflect the perspective of a number of the town’s residents. Rumbling beneath this is the broader examination of a developing post-war Australia, with issues of the lingering effects of war and violence and an accumulation of cultural change.
Vivid and innovative, 1953 is a striking work of narrative poetry, and a magnificent portrait of an Australian town of the period, and a dramatic moment within that.
About the author
Geoff Page
Geoff Page was born 1940 and grew up on a cattle station on the Clarence River in northern New South Wales. He was head of the English department at Narrabundah College in Canberra from 1974 to 2001 and has published nineteen collections of poetry as well as two novels, five verse novels and several other works including anthologies, translations and a biography. He has won several awards, including the Australian Capital Territory Poetry Award and the 2001 Patrick White Literary Award, and selections from his work have been translated into over six languages. Geoff Page lives in Canberra.