Robyn Rowland, previously Professor of Social Inquiry at Deakin University, has published seven books, four of them poetry. Her fourth, Shadows at the Gate, (Five Islands Press, 2004) was launched to powerful acclaim at Adelaide Writers’ Week, Perth International Arts Festival, and in Clifden, Ireland. She has read from it at Norfolk Island Writers’ and Readers’ Festival, The Australian Poetry Festival (Sydney), Tasmanian Poetry Festival, in Italy and in Ireland (2004) at Cúirt International Festival of Literature, Strokestown Poetry festival, Linen Hall Arts Centre, Yeats Society ; Byron Bay Writers Festival 2005.

Robyn has regularly visited Ireland since 1983 and lived there over extended periods of time (2001/2 funded by Arts Victoria)) in Connemara. She has read and given workshops at Éigse Michael Hartnett;  Listowel Writers Week; Boyle Arts Festival; Yeats Society, Sligo;  Scriobh, Sligo;  Clifden Community Arts Week; October Arts in Ennis, Co Clare; Kings House Boyle, Roscommon; The Australian Arts and Culture Festival 1999, Dublin (where her third book Fiery Waters  was launched by the Australian Ambassador). In February 2000 she was the guest poet at the University of Coimbra, Portugal, funded by the Luso Americana Foundation and the Faculdade de Letras, where she read in the Teatro Academico de Gil Vicente. In 1996 Robyn was made an Officer in the Order of Australia by the Australian Government for her contribution to higher education and women’s health

Poetry books:  Shadows at the Gate Five Islands Press, 2004, Fiery Waters, Five Islands Press, 2001; Perverse Serenity, Spinifex , Melb. 1992; Heinemann, Melb,1990; Filigree in Blood, Longman Cheshire Modern Poets, Melb 1982.

Poetry Judge:  Fellowship of Australian Writers Anne Elder Award for first book of poetry 2005 and 2006; Society of Women Writers Victoria, 2005;  Australian Capital Territory Writer’s Centre Poetry Prize 2005; WB Yeats Australian and New Zealand Poetry Prize 2004.

Poetry Prizes/Awards: Varuna Writers Retreat Fellowship 2005/6; International Poetry Prize, Melbourne Poets Union 2005, second; Martha Richardson Poetry Medal 2005, second; BTG Blue Dog Poetry Reveiwing Competittion, 2005, commended;  won Catalpa Poetry Prize 2002, from the Australian Irish Heritage Association, as well as the Catalpa Writers Prize 2002 for best of all fiction, essay and poetry; commendation in the W. B Yeats Poetry Prize 2002 for Australia and New Zealand; highly commended (2nd) in the John Shaw Neilson Poetry Award (Fellowship of Australian Writers); commended in Max Harris Literary Awards; won Canning Literary Award, W.Aust.

Poems in:  Poetry Ireland (Ireland), The Shop (Ireland), Agenda Poetry (UK), Cafe Review (USA), Jones av (Canada),  Worchester Review (USA), Yomimono (Japan), Táin, Salt-Lick Quarterly (Aust), Blue Dog: Australian Poetry, Island; Arena; Divan, Poetry Australia, MindFire (e-zine, USA), Quadrant, Overland, Island Magazine, Social Alternatives,The Tasmanian Review, Aspect, Westerly, Luna, Bulletin Literary Supplement, Syllable, Sydney Morning Herald, The Age newspaper, The Australian newspaper Weekend Review, & in New Zealand - Landfall , Climate, Pacific (Moana) Quarterly, Nexus,  Comment,Pilgrims (NZ), The New Zealand Listener, Islands.

Invited papers on poetry 2004: ‘Belonging and Identity. What the Irish have woven into us’, Irish Spaces : homeland and diaspora, Melbourne University; ‘Hot words and Sweet. Writing from life’: Tasmanian Poetry Festival; ‘Passion of poetry’: Norfolk Island Festival;  ‘Belonging and Indigenous culture’: Ngara. Living in this place now. Fourth Australian Poetry Festival.

Articles on poetry and the arts:

*De-lyricising the lyric? A response to David McCooey's ‘new lyricism’, Blue Dog. Australian Poetry,  vol 4 no 8, December 2005.

*How might the non-indigenous be at home here? What can we learn from indigenous culture? in John Muk Muk Burke and Martin Langford (eds) Ngara. Living in this place now. Poems essays and meditations. Five Islands Press, Melbounre 2004.

*Poetry and audience, letter to Five Bells. Australian Poetry, NSW Poets’ Union, vol 11, no 4, Spring 2004.

*Green Turtle Dreaming. Envisioning a way forward in synthesising art and anthropology, Artwork, Issue 62, September 2005.

Anthologised : The Best Australian Poems 2005, ed Les Murray (Black Inc, Schwartz  Aust); The Best Australian Poems 2004, ed Les Murray (Black Inc, Schwartz Pub Aust. 2004).

Verbal Medicine: 20 Contemporary Poets of Australia and New Zealand, ed. Tim Metcalf, Ginninderra Press, Canberra,  2006

Ngara. Living in this place now. Eds John Muk Muk Burke and Martin Langford (Five Islands Press ,2004) ‘Belonging and Indigenous culture’ plus poems

Said the Rat! Writers at the Water Rat 2000-2002. Eds. Jennifer Harrison and Phil Ilton  (Black Pepper and the Fellowship of Australian Writers, 2003)

Around Geelong. Place, Memory and Home. Ed. Wendy Ratawa (Kinross Productions, 2002)

The Turning Wave - the verse and song of Irish Australia.

Eds - Colleen Z Burke and Vincent Woods (Kardooair Press, Armidale, 2001)

Wee Girls. Women writing from an Irish Perspective. Ed. Lizz Murphy. (Spinifex Press, 1996) Kardooair Press, Armidale, 2001.

Radically Speaking ed. D Bell and R Klein (Spinifex Press, 1996)

Moments of Desire. ed. Susan Hawthorne and Jenny Pausacker (Penguin, 1989)

Poetry Involves. ed. Denise Scott, (Heinemann , 1988, U.K. !989)

Up from Below: Poems of the 1980’s. An Australian Women’s Anthology (Redress Press, 1987)

Poems Selected from the Australian’s 20th Anniversary Competition. Eds. Judith Rodriguez and Andrew Taylor (Angus and Robertson, 1985

The Australian Bedside Book. A Selection of Writings from the Australian Literary Supplement. Ed, Geoffrey Dutton (MacMillan, 1987)

Fourth Form English. Ed. Peter Smart ( Longmans, 1980)

Experiential journalism:  various articles for the Age newspaper, Saturday Essay and Faith columns. 

Other publications:  Three Academic books published by Oxford Uni press; Indiana Uni Press USA; Cedar, London; Routledge London; Pan MacMillan Australia; 63 book chapters and numerous editorial and newspaper pieces on research.

Readings: Robyn has been reading her poetry for 30 years including in Australia at La Mama Poetica; The Water Rat; Off Chapel Poetry; Readings at Readings; Spoleto Festival Melbourne;  The Adelaide Arts Festival;  Women 150 Festival; The Melbourne Poetry Festival, Dan O’Connell, Smith Street, Gertrude street readings; Salon A Muse; Boroondara Soiree; Celtic Club; Pirra Festival and many more.  Radio readings include PoeticA, ABC Radio, and Connemara Radio.

Readings Internationally e.g. University of Coimbra, Portugal; The Birmingham Arts Festival U.K.; Cambridge University; Trinity College Dublin; Cúirt. International Festival of Literature, Galway; Strokestown Poetry Festival, Roscommon; Women’s Arts Festival Dublin Ireland; Listowel Writers Week, Kerry Ireland; Yeats Society, Sligo Ireland; Australian Embassy Dublin; Scriobh, Sligo; Clifden Community Arts Week; October Arts in Ennis, Clare; Boyle, Roscommon; Cuirt na Ban University College Dublin;  University of Coimbra, Portugal; Summer Institute, Lesvos, Greece.

Critical response: The hallmark of Robyn’s poetry is that it conveys the complexity of human feelings and emotions with honesty and in a clear communicative style. Reviewers have written:

Filigree in Blood:

was ‘powerful and commanding’, ‘with that degree of integrity which makes one pay attention’.

Perverse Serenity:

 was described by critic and poet Barrett Reid  as ‘drawn with rare honesty and a compelling strength of observation which involves the reader’. He wrote: ‘here is writing not afraid to be vulnerable, not trapped in literary artifice, not reticent about emotion, its hopes, its fears, its withdrawals and assertions, which we all share and which enrich our humanity. A memorable picture emerges of a contemporary woman, intelligent and able to feel deeply, who is not afraid to feel the incompleteness, the unfinished edges of human love’.

Fiery Waters:

  ‘is a generous and passionate book. The sensualist shines through: shrewd, empathic, intimate. Rowland celebrates the immediacy of experience, the poignancy of happiness. The poems are arranged almost seasonably and the natural world is an implacable metronome..’ -

‘.. the poems leave a sensation of warmth long after reading them’. Jennifer Harrison, Five Bells.

‘Rowland is a fluent, eloquent poet ... the sensually explicit lines skilfully manage their metaphor.. Her passionate political poems will give heart to many readers’. ‘There is ardour and brave candour in this celebratory stance’.  Barry Hill, Poetry editor, The Weekend Australian, Books Extra, Review, March 30. 2002.

‘Both sensual and sensuous, it is concerned with the “real world”’. Poems have a ‘great personal intensity’. ‘She deals tellingly with a range of injustices around the world, always bringing out their human dimensions rather than simply wringing her hands. With ‘no obvious stylistic or literary or political allegiance.. a talented woman writing directly and courageously out of her own experiences.’ Geoff Page, winner of the Patrick White Literary Award 2002, review in Australian Book Review, March 2002.

Shadows at the gate:

Irish poet Michael Coady : ‘These poems are organic outgrowths of a life encompassing both Ireland and Australia,  love and loss, anchorage and dislocation, hurt and healing. While retaining artistic control, Robyn Rowland allows real  feeling to inform her poetry, rather than playing safe with a fashionably  detached ironic mode. Shadows at the Gate  authentically sings  of tenderness and courage in the face of ‘time’s corrosive kiss’.  

‘Soaked in the richness of lived experience and its accompanying shadows..tightly constructed, thick with description and image’, Andrea Breen, Island 98, Spring 2004

Eileen Batersby wrote in The Irish Times after Robyn’s reading on Inis Oirr for Cúirt International Festival of Literature in Galway,: ‘Memory, anecdotal narrative and strong emotion shape Rowland’s strong, personal and well-crafted verse.’ Her reading was ‘honest and questioning’ and ‘Irish history filters through her story as told in appealing, unsentimental but humanly touching poems.’
 

Of Robyn Rowland’s work, her publisher Ron Pretty writes:

‘ Five Islands Press published her third collection, Fiery Waters, in 2001. That book had both critical and commercial success. It sold out its print run, and received a number of reviews, all very positive. Rowland’s skill as a poet is to combine lilt with  passion, musicality with social concern, clarity with depth. She has always had the ability to see the political in the personal, to see the world, not in a mustard seed, but in the space between two bodies, or the errant human cell.  Fiery Waters fully deserved its success.

As well, she  is a poet who does not stand still.  Her new collection, Shadows at the Gate, retains the music and the passion, but there is something new here too. There has been, in the writing since the previous book, a tightening of the line, a moving towards a greater conciseness, without, it should be stressed, any loss of the music. Shadows at the Gate moves between Ireland and Victoria, between the twin towers and the love of a priest, between selkies and grandfathers with great assurance and insight. There is something European or perhaps Irish in her poetic consciousness: she handles passion and laughter, politics and loss with equal confidence. Her work is very sensual and encompasses a broad range from the political to love affairs that go astray, death and cancer’.

The Worchester Review described her work as dealing with ‘sensual, erotic and heterosexual themes ... in a startlingly honest style’.  Of her readings Grainne Millar, Tyrone Guthrie Centre wrote; ‘inspirational and deeply moving reading’ and Michael Roche, Second Secretary Australian Embassy Dublin wrote: ‘Accessible, exquisite diction and moving expression’.

 
Other accomplishments

Robyn  is an experienced reader and public speaker. Previous to 1996 when Robyn was diagnosed with breast cancer and left academic life, she was Professor Rowland, Head of the School of Social Inquiry and Director of the Australian Women’s Research Centre at Deakin University. Robyn has edited and refereed for a multitude of international journals. A well- known public critic of reproductive technology and genetic engineering for fifteen years, Robyn published Living Laboratories. Women and Reproductive Technology in 1992 (Pan MacMillan, Aust; Indiana University Press, USA; Limetree and Cedar, U.K.)  In that capacity she addressed the House of Lords, Trinity College Dublin, the Quebec Government’s gathering on legislation in these areas,  and various governments internationally and nationally used her work. She delivered over 100  public addresses or conference papers and conducted interviews and debates on television, on radio and in the print media. In 1996  Honours List she was made an Officer in the Order of Australia by the Governor General on behalf of the Australian Government for her contribution to women’s health and higher education.