Johanna's BlogAlan Gould
b. 1949, London
Alan Gould is an Australian poet and novelist. In 1986 he was the Australian Representative at the International Poetry Festival in Manila, and in 1988 he fulfilled the same role at the International Poetry Festival at Struga, Macedonia.
He has published eighteen books, six fiction tides, eleven poetry titles, and one collection of essays. In 2006 he completed a four year term as a member of The Literature Board Of The Australia Council.
Alan was one of eight poets commissioned for the 'Pigeon Poetry' project.
Publications:
Poetry
1978: Icelandic Solitaries
1981: Astral Sea
1984: The Pausing of the Hour
1986: The Twofold Place
1988: Years Found in Likeness
1992: Formerlight
1992: Momentum
1994: The Life and Times of Reece
1996: Mermaid
1999: Dalliance and Scorn
2001: A Fold in the Light
2005: The Past Completes Me: Selected Poems 1973–2003
Novels
1984: The Man Who Stayed Below
1988: The Enduring Disguises: Three novellas
1991: To the Burning City
1994: Close Ups
1998: The Tazyrik Year
2001: The Schoonermaster's Dance
Essays
1993: Three Streets in Search of an Author
1996: The Totem Ship
Unidentified Music
Free will's a silky flame, persists
when ice must grind me in its fists,
conundrum I can't leave alone,
the lobby-talk along my bone.
My eye was on my chisel-work
an afternoon was growing dark
as butter-pats of kauri curled
and my small workshop radio trawled
a tumult of orchestral strings.
How then that sudden quieting
by which one small exquisite tune
flickered from the bruit just gone
and in the instant of the change
forgiveness was no longer strange?
