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MEDIA RELEASE - 22 March 1996

Passionate About Poetry: The Angry Penguin


Max Harris is remembered throughout Australia as the victim of the Ern Malley hoax poems, as the proprietor of the Mary Martin Bookshops, and as the long- standing commentator whose weekly column appeared in the Australian for over 25 years. But this extraordinarily gifted Australian considered poetry his true vocation.

In 1941 when he was only 20 years old, Max Harris established, with other young poets in Adelaide, the literary and art journal Angry Penguins. In the early 1940s, conservatives used the term ?Angry Penguins as an expression of contempt for modernism and liberal trends in art and literature. The name later became synonymous with the artistic and literary creativity of a movement which helped to change the shape of Australia s cultural life a movement which centred around Max Harris.

The Angry Penguin: Selected Poems of Max Harris is the first compilation of Max Harris's poems to be widely distributed. Providing an overview of his life's creative work, this volume demands a reassessment of Max Harris s contribution to Australian literature, firmly establishing him as an Australian lyric poet of considerable standing.

The critics have said:

  • Form and a decent degree of clarity seem to me to be the most important virtues in poetry after rhythmical and imaginative power. Max Harris has all of them by snatches, and the last two of astonishing quality Charles Jury, patron of Angry Penguins, issue no.1, 1941
  • Max Harris s place in Australia s cultural history is secured by his essential role in the development of modernism in art and literature in this country ... The poems in this selection give him a significant place among Australia's lyric poets. Alan Brissenden, Introduction to The Angry Penguin, 1996

The Angry Penguin: Selected Poems of Max Harris, presents a rich sampling of poems written throughout Harris s life, from the early poems of his youth to the more contemplative poems of his later years. He died in January 1995. The Angry Penguin is published by the National Library of Australia. It is available for $A24.95 from the NLA Shop by telephoning (06) 262 1646 and from good bookshops everywhere.


For further information and interviews, please contact:

Gay Woods, Public Affairs Manager
Telephone: (06) 2621252
Facsimile: (06) 2735483
E-mail: gwoods@nla.gov.au


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