Jan Owen - Poetry

Poetry

Owen began writing poetry in her thirties and her first collection, Boy with Telescope (1986), won the Anne Elder Award. She has had several writer's residencies in Australia and also in Italy, France, Malaysia, and Scotland.

Her awards include the Mary Gilmore Prize and the Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize. In 2007, she won the Max Harris Poetry Award for her poem "Scent, Comb, Spoon". The judges wrote: "a well crafted poem full of intriguing resonances on the theme of memory and association. The poem spins a chain of possibilities and disharmonies but always returns to the idea of the value of what we have experienced. This is a poem of turns and surprises and we enjoyed it more with each reading".

In a radio interview in 2002, Owen said that "I sometimes think that I should be writing political satire or trying to tackle the real problems of this world, and then I remember a Taoist saying which is 'You think you can improve the world? I do not think it can be done'." In the same interview, she also said that "poetry is against dogma, against a final certainty, it's very unsettling. ... I think we need the challenge and the shake-up, and the freshness of a new way of looking at things which poetry can give us."

Read more about this topic:  Jan Owen

Famous quotes containing the word poetry:

    I regard a love for poetry as one of the most needful and helpful elements in the life- outfit of a human being. It was the greatest of blessings to me, in the long days of toil to which I was shut in much earlier than most young girls are, that the poetry I held in my memory breathed its enchanted atmosphere through me and around me, and touched even dull drudgery with its sunshine.
    Lucy Larcom (1824–1893)

    There is no longer beauty except in the struggle. No more masterpieces without an aggressive character. Poetry must be a violent assault against the unknown forces in order to overcome them and prostrate them before men.
    Tommaso Marinetti (1876–1944)

    If there’s no money in poetry, neither is there poetry in money.
    Robert Graves (1895–1985)