![]() ![]() He has offered reliable and consistent support to others for decades.īorn in Poland in 1948 and arriving in Australia via Israel as a ten-year-old, Skovron’s cultural and intellectual reach has always been global. It is common to pick up a new book of poetry in Melbourne and find his name there on the acknowledgements page. Hundreds of poets, especially the young and emerging, have been edited, mentored and encouraged by Skovron. Alongside this work, his quiet and sustained impact on poets and poetry in Melbourne has been immense. Skovron worked as an editor for two Australian encyclopedia projects during the 1970s, then from 1980 with publishers Macmillan, Hutchinson, Dent and finally, Houghton Mifflin. His novella, The Poet, was co-winner of the Christina Stead Prize in 2005. ![]() The community is best characterised, though, by acts of generosity towards each other, and Skovron has been a behind-the-scenes master of generosity towards other writers.Īuthor of seven books of poetry and three works of fiction, Skovron has previously won the Anne Elder and Mary Gilmore awards for a first book of poetry, the Wesley Michel Wright Prize for poetry (twice), John Shaw Neilson Poetry award (twice) and Australian Book Review (now Peter Porter) Prize for a single poem. Writers do belong to a community, even if it is fractured, fractious, garrulous and competitive at times. This prize is awarded to a writer who might not have received the recognition that is due when that writer’s full contributions and achievements are considered. You will have encountered Alex Skovron, who has this year won the Patrick White Literary Award for his achievements in poetry and prose and his lifelong support for writers and writing in Melbourne and beyond. He has a ready grin and eyes that invite you in – often to a conversation you’ll remember for its warmth, intelligence, wit and passion for literature. Even if you’re using your imagination, you’re still going to be influenced by everything you’ve seen and read and done.If you have ever been to the launch of a small-press poetry book at Collected Works bookshop (now defunct), or at one of the Readings bookstores, or at a bar or café in Melbourne, you may have seen a small, fit-looking, bespectacled man. “I don’t think you can help but draw from your own experience. If there is no emotional resonance to a story then I’m generally not all that interested in writing it.” ![]() “Emotion is very important to me, and the works that have stayed with me over the years have usually been ones that made me feel something rather than think something. The appeal was always the idea of escape: of being in control of the world and able to do anything you want.” I was obsessed with them as a teenager, and have remained so to an extent as an adult. “Lucid dreams are when you ‘wake up’ in a dream while remaining asleep. On Lucid Dreams And The True Crime That Inspired “The Shadows” ![]() Attempting to come up with my own words is hard enough having other people’s words playing in the background is just too distracting.” “I use music to help with my writing all the time, but like a lot of authors, I find it almost impossible to write while listening to lyrics. There’s pleasure to be had in feeling the rational world unsettled and tipped slightly off-balance, and all of these books deliver that and more.”Ī playlist for The Shadow Friend/The Shadows “Here is my choice of five very different books, each of which has given me a shiver over the years. One that is rare because it’s awful, and which is sought after for both reasons.” “It’s a familiar and recurring motif in fiction: the search for a work of art that may or may not exist. On the pleasures of fictional forbidden texts ![]()
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