Paul Hetherington

About

Emeritus Professor Paul Hetherington is a distinguished Australian poet, scholar and editor who has published 18 poetry collections, a verse novel and 14 chapbooks along with numerous scholarly chapters and articles. He has received more than 50 awards and nominations for his writing. These include winning the inaugural The Marion Halligan Award in the 2024 MARION ACT Literary Awards for the book Sleeplessness (Pierian Springs Press, 2023), the 2022 Ballina Region for Refugees Seeking Asylum Poetry Prize, the 2021 Bruce Dawe National Poetry Prize, and the 2014 Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards (poetry) for the best book of poetry published in Australia—and a number of Pushcart Prize nominations in the US. His scholarly writing addresses the analysis of complex and nuanced language, along with creative collaboration and creative practice-led research and translation, international prose poetry, ekphrastic poetry and the lyric essay. In 2020 Princeton University Press published the authoritative 344-page scholarly monograph, Prose Poetry: An Introduction, which Paul co-authored with Professor Cassandra Atherton, subsequently shortlisted for the 2021 Australian University Heads of English (AUHE) Prize for Literary Scholarship. In the same year, Melbourne University Press published the definitive Anthology of Australian Prose Poetry, which Paul and Cassandra Atherton jointly edited. Apart from Sleeplessness, his most recent books of poetry are the collection of linked prose poetry sequences, Ragged Disclosures (Canberra: Recent Work Press); the prose poetry collection, Her One Hundred and Seven Words (Cheshire, Massachusetts, MadHat Press); and the co-authored book of epistolary prose poetry, Fugitive Letters (with Cassandra Atherton (Canberra: Recent Work Press). Paul founded the International Poetry Studies Institute (IPSI) in the Centre for Creative and Cultural Research at the University of Canberra and was Professor of Writing there until the end of 2022. He was a recipient of the University of Canberra’s Research Awards in the category for Individual Research Excellence, Humanities and Creative Arts, 2017; and was also granted (as part of an academic team) the award in the category for Outstanding Achievements in Research or Innovation, 2017. In 2014 he founded the International Prose Poetry Group and co-founded Axon: Creative Explorations. He recently founded Spiralis: A Journal of Prose Poetry and Ekphrastic Poetry with Cassandra Atherton. Paul also worked in the cultural sector, most notably for the National Library of Australia, where he was Director of Publications and Events, founding editor of the quarterly humanities and literary journal Voices (1991–97) and editor of the long-lived National Library of Australia News. Paul chaired the ACT Cultural Council (2005–13) and the ACT Public Art Panel (2006–11) and in these roles instigated various arts initiatives, including the development and delivery of the first comprehensive policy and action framework for public art in the Australian Capital Territory.

Education