Understanding foreign cultures through literature

Hosted by: AIIA WA Branch

The event will start on: Tuesday, 28 June 2011 6:00 PM

And will end on: Tuesday, 28 June 2011 8:00 PM

At St Catherine’s College

2 Park Road , Nedlands Western Australia

Posted by: wa   

Dennis Haskell will argue for the importance of literature as a guide to a nation's cultural and social identity, even though it goes largely ignored in the general media and in political discussions. When Les Murray writes (in a poem set in Western Australia), 'At birth, each Australian / receives a stout bullshit gauge / made of mulga', and ‘we are a colloquial nation / most colonial when serious', he tells us more about the nation than pages of ministerial announcements. Dennis will illustrate his argument with excerpts from the literature of Australia, Ireland and Singapore.

About the speaker:

Dennis Haskell is the author of 6 collections of poetry, and thirteen volumes of literary scholarship and criticism. His All the Time in the World won the Western Australian Premier's Prize for Poetry in 2007 and is being translated into French, Italian and Chinese.  Haskell was co-editor of Westerly, from 1985-2009 and is Professor of English and Cultural Studies at The University of Western Australia. He is also currently Chair of the Literature Board of the Australia Council for the Arts. His Acts of Defiance: New and Selected Poems was published by Salt Publishing (Cambridge, UK) in December 2010.