Latest Issues
AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'Born in Sydney and brought up in Greece, Martin Johnston’s experience of two languages and two cultures led him to produce a body of work that is both very Australian and quintessentially European.
'This selection includes his two previously published volumes, some of his early poems and Greek translations and the work he produced in the period before his death in 1990. It shows the range of Martin’s voice, the clarity of his perception, and the breadth of his passions.'
Source: publisher's blurb
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
-
Steps to Parnassus : Martin Johnston’s The Sea-Cucumber
2021
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Westerly , vol. 66 no. 1 2021; (p. 60-76) 'Martin Johnston (1947-1990) left behind a slim oeuvre of remarkable poems, lauded for their wit and erudition. The son of the writers Charmian Clift and George Johnston, he spent most of his childhood in Europe, living for almost a decade on the island the of Hydra as part of an expatriate community of artists, which included the then little-heralded Leonard Cohen. He worked mainly as a critic through the 1970s, and in the '80s wrote subtitles for SBS Television. Johnston's life was also marked by tragedy. His mother's suicide in 1969 was followed by his father's death from tuberculosis the following year, and then his sister Shane's suicide four years later. These events haunt his writing. Johnston, who was an alcoholic for much of his adult life, died at the age of forty-two. During this time, he published an acclaimed experimental novel, Cicada Gambit (1984). He also published a book of modern Greek poetry in translation Ithaka (1973), and three books of poetry: Shadowmass (1971), The Sea-Cucumber (1978) and The Typewriter Considered as a Bee-Trap (1984). An elegant volume of Johnston's selected poems, Beautiful Objects (Ligature), edited and introduced by Nadia Wheatley, marked the thirtieth anniversary of his death in 2020, along with the launch of a memorial website. ' (Introduction)
-
‘Love Is the Subject’ : A Welcome New Edition of Martin Johnston
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , December no. 427 2020;
— Review of Beautiful Objects : Selected Poems 2020 selected work poetry'There has as yet been no comprehensive critical study of the poets associated with the ‘Generation of ’68’, of whom Martin Johnston was perhaps the most naturally gifted and certainly the most intellectually expansive representative. This is because the project of these poets, to fully incorporate the stylistic innovations of modernist poetics and its development in postwar American models within local practice, is still ongoing. If we examine only those poets gathered in the 1979 New Australian Poetry anthology – in which Johnston’s lengthy experiment in parataxis, ‘The Blood Aquarium’, appears as a signature work – we find major authors even today in the process of developing their practice.' (Introduction)
-
‘Love Is the Subject’ : A Welcome New Edition of Martin Johnston
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , December no. 427 2020;
— Review of Beautiful Objects : Selected Poems 2020 selected work poetry'There has as yet been no comprehensive critical study of the poets associated with the ‘Generation of ’68’, of whom Martin Johnston was perhaps the most naturally gifted and certainly the most intellectually expansive representative. This is because the project of these poets, to fully incorporate the stylistic innovations of modernist poetics and its development in postwar American models within local practice, is still ongoing. If we examine only those poets gathered in the 1979 New Australian Poetry anthology – in which Johnston’s lengthy experiment in parataxis, ‘The Blood Aquarium’, appears as a signature work – we find major authors even today in the process of developing their practice.' (Introduction)
-
Steps to Parnassus : Martin Johnston’s The Sea-Cucumber
2021
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Westerly , vol. 66 no. 1 2021; (p. 60-76) 'Martin Johnston (1947-1990) left behind a slim oeuvre of remarkable poems, lauded for their wit and erudition. The son of the writers Charmian Clift and George Johnston, he spent most of his childhood in Europe, living for almost a decade on the island the of Hydra as part of an expatriate community of artists, which included the then little-heralded Leonard Cohen. He worked mainly as a critic through the 1970s, and in the '80s wrote subtitles for SBS Television. Johnston's life was also marked by tragedy. His mother's suicide in 1969 was followed by his father's death from tuberculosis the following year, and then his sister Shane's suicide four years later. These events haunt his writing. Johnston, who was an alcoholic for much of his adult life, died at the age of forty-two. During this time, he published an acclaimed experimental novel, Cicada Gambit (1984). He also published a book of modern Greek poetry in translation Ithaka (1973), and three books of poetry: Shadowmass (1971), The Sea-Cucumber (1978) and The Typewriter Considered as a Bee-Trap (1984). An elegant volume of Johnston's selected poems, Beautiful Objects (Ligature), edited and introduced by Nadia Wheatley, marked the thirtieth anniversary of his death in 2020, along with the launch of a memorial website. ' (Introduction)
