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Michael Sharkey Michael Sharkey i(A14914 works by) (a.k.a. Michael Francis Sharkey)
Also writes as: 'A.D. Malley'
Born: Established: 1946 Canterbury, Canterbury area, Sydney Inner West, Sydney, New South Wales, ;
Gender: Male
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Works By

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1 Artistic Intelligence, Fortitude, and Grace : Michael Sharkey Reviews ‘Ways to Say Goodbye’ by Anne Kellas Michael Sharkey , 2023 single work review
— Appears in: Rochford Street Review , vol. 37 no. 2 2023;
— Review of Ways to Say Goodbye Anne Kellas , 2023 selected work poetry

'I received a pre-publication draft of Anne Kellas’s most recent book early in March, when I was offered, and enthusiastically seized, the chance to endorse the work of a poet I have admired since first acquaintance with it. The collection was such a knockout that I could hardly believe anyone in Australia could respond to personal catastrophe with such artistic intelligence, fortitude, and grace that this book reveals.' (Introduction)
1 1 y separately published work icon What If I Told You? Unlikely Love Poems on Several Occasions Michael Sharkey , Glebe : Puncher and Wattmann , 2023 26364295 2023 selected work poetry

'Re-collected over six decades, these love poems show Michael Sharkey to be a true master of the sonnet form. They demonstrate Sharkey the poet at his very best, not only dextrous, but generous, touching, wide-ranging and surprising. The poems are as manifold as there are different kinds of love: erotic, romantic, familial and friendship. This book is destined to become a classic of its kind.' (Publication summary)
1 1 The Simplicity of It i "Like a word in a dictionary of a language no one speaks", Michael Sharkey , 2020 single work poetry
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 12 September 2020; (p. 18)
1 y separately published work icon The Foliage in the Underworld Michael Sharkey , Glebe : Puncher and Wattmann , 2019 18466173 2019 selected work poetry

'Martin Duwell wrote in Australian Poetry Review that ‘Sharkey’s project seems to be built on a desire to make poetry once more (or more satisfactorily) deal with life as a socially lived phenomenon, and that ‘not many people are writing so well and so humorously about the Australia we inhabit’. Jeremy Fisher wrote in the journal Text, that Sharkey ‘has the rare ability to reach into our national psyche and pull out the ugly centre yet not rail at the horror of it all’. Since relinquishing editorship of the Australian Poetry Journal, Sharkey has published Many Such as She: an anthology of Australian Victorian Women Poets of World War One (2018, revised edition 2019) with Walleah Press, Hobart. The present collection gathers and sometimes revises poems from stray current or hard to find sources.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.
1 Just Look at Yourself i "The codger with the rheumy eyes tries looking at his hand,", Michael Sharkey , 2019 single work poetry
— Appears in: Eureka Street , 06 October vol. 29 no. 20 2019;
1 Five Poems from a Sonnet Sequence i "I wanted to sing opera, but the notes", Michael Sharkey , 2019 single work poetry
— Appears in: Eureka Street , 06 October vol. 29 no. 20 2019;
1 3 y separately published work icon Many Such as She : Victorian Australian Women Poets of World War One Michael Sharkey (editor), Hobart : Walleah Press , 2018 16088719 2018 anthology poetry biography

'This volume samples the poetry of twenty-five poets associated with the State of Victoria who were publishing significant work during the First World War. The collection is as much a social and cultural map of women’s attitudes and occupations as it is a poetry anthology. Short accounts of the poets’ lives and their publishing history provide insights into the way the War shaped their everyday concerns. The book expands common notions of what constitutes war poetry, and testifies to the social role and styles of poetry in general. These poets wrote at a time when poetry was a public art, as their work was widely published in the daily and weekly media as well as single volumes of the period and shortly thereafter.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.
1 Still Life, Other Life : Michael Sharkey Examines the Poetry of Barbara Fisher Michael Sharkey , 2018 single work essay
— Appears in: Rochford Street Review , October 2017 - March no. 24 2018;

'Rescued from Time, Barbara Fisher’s 2016 collection of poems, takes its title from a comment by American novelist James Salter’s comment, in his 1997 collection of essays and memoirs, Burning the Days: Recollections: ‘Art, in a sense, is life brought to a standstill, rescued from time’. It’s easy to see why Salter’s sensibility resonates with Fisher. Salter’s extensive experience, as fighter pilot, novelist, film writer, expatriate in Europe and extoller and lover of women, is revisited in evocations of favourite locations and people. In his novels, women and men characters are hearteningly presented as complex and engaging individuals, and he has a special regard for the strength and abilities of women who, like his male characters, succeed or fail in enterprises including love affairs that demand commitment and honesty. Salter’s memoirs record his delight in works of great writers he admires: Flannery O’Connor, Marguerite Duras, Pauline Réage, William Faulkner, Albert Camus, Jean Genet, Dylan Thomas, and others whose lives also fascinate him. Among other textual pleasures, Salter’s Burning the Days is a guide to European (chiefly French) and American literary sites that provoke his intellectual wanderlust.' (Introduction)
1 y separately published work icon In the Real World and Other Poems Michael Sharkey , Tasmania : Burringbah Books , 2017 16088785 2017 selected work poetry
1 y separately published work icon In the Real World Michael Sharkey , Tasmania : Burringbah Books , 2017 12814347 2017 selected work poetry
1 Michael Sharkey of David Musgrave, Anatomy of Voice Michael Sharkey , 2017 single work essay
— Appears in: Southerly , vol. 76 no. 2 2017; (p. 229-237)

Michael Sharkey analyses David Musgrave's Anatomy of Voice.
1 Refuge i "In Fiji in a cyclone I saw houses seaward bound,", Michael Sharkey , 2016 single work poetry
— Appears in: Writing to the Wire 2016; (p. 159-161)
1 Australian Poetry Journal', Vol 6, Issue 2. Michael Sharkey , Jacinta Le Plastrier , 2016 single work essay
— Appears in: Communion Literary Magazine , December no. 6 2016;
1 The Rapture Endures Michael Sharkey , 2016 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Poetic Eye : Occasional Writings 1982-2012 2016; (p. 584-587) 'In late June 2012, the American publisher RD Armstrong asked me if I could contribute something to the forthcoming edition of the American-born Queensland poet Billy Jone's latest collection, Radiation (Los Angeles : Lummox Press, 2012). Knowing that Billy's time was short, I wrote the following foreword, at once a record of my brief personal encounters with the man and a tribute to his poetry. The piece arrived in time for Billy to see it and endorse it. He died on 3 July, greatly lamented on both sides of the Pacific.'  
1 Trans-Tasman Literary Relations Michael Sharkey , 2016 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Poetic Eye : Occasional Writings 1982-2012 2016; (p. 575-584) 'During the summer of 2011-2012, I lodged at the Frank Sargeson Centre in Auckland, proofreading a biography and initiating a long delayed record of forty years of commuting across the Tasman. On nearly every visit, I'd met New Zealand writers, and we rambled around the context and products of the different cultures that had emerged from a language that, in large part, we share. Now, I was engaged in sifting and expanding observations I'd recorded in reviews, essays, interviews, and articles on Australian and New Zealand writers, with a personal bias toward the conversation of poetry.' (Introduction)
1 Moving and Memorable Michael Sharkey , 2016 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Poetic Eye : Occasional Writings 1982-2012 2016; (p. 569-572) 'Launch speeches are a genre-in-waiting, a hybrid creature that shamelessly plunders forms like the essay, book review, back-cover blurb, biographical sketch, lament for the state of the art, diatribe against rivals or hymn to the brave publisher. The flexibility of the worm is exhibited in Ralph Wessman's Famous Reporter magazine, which has featured two or more launch speeches in each issue for several years. One of the most important things a launch speech can do is not be boring, so I'll skip the critical essay, back-cover blurb, diatribe, and hymn. It goes without saying that we're grateful to the publisher of Peter Lach Newinsky's latest book like the author, Picaro Press should be encouraged in the best practical way, through healthy sales. As for biography, Peter relates scenes from his family history in Europe and Australia so vividly that paraphrase sells them short. I'll skip something else as well: I'm often struck by the way the launcher of a book usurps the poet's reading of the works, so I'll leave the readings to Peter for the obvious reason that when you hear him read, you will understand what Wallace Stevens meant when he said poetry must give pleasure. This collection does so — it lifts the spirit.' (Introduction)
1 Byron's 'Deluge' Michael Sharkey , 2016 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Poetic Eye : Occasional Writings 1982-2012 2016; (p. 474-491)
1 The Poetry of Lauren Williams Michael Sharkey , 2016 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Poetic Eye : Occasional Writings 1982-2012 2016; (p. 464-474) Lauren Williiams was ten years old when the poets of the 'Generation of '681 were forming their networks through poetry readings, the creation of small magazines, a takeover of the important Poetry Magazine, and entry into the mainstream by way of appearance in Poetry Australia and older established literary magazines. Robert Adamson and John Tranter in Sydney, Richard Tipping in South Australia, and Kris Hemensley and Robert Kenny in Melbourne characteristically printed their own work and that of their friends in such magazines as New Poetry (the transformed, American poetry-inflected successor to the Poetry Society of Australia's Poetry Magazine), Free Grass, Transit, Mok, Our Glass, Auk, and Flagstones. These male-initiated (and male-dominated) publications were unlike the more staid, university-connected literary magazines of the period: Meanjin, Overland, Southerly, and Westerly. They expressed a dissident response to the still generally English-oriented and nativist Australian traditions distinguished by emulation of long-revered or contemporary English verse, composition of ambitious versified epics of discovery, and lingering ballad and realist verse that reflected what would now be called post-colonial Australian poetry. Many of the 'new' Australian poets also wrote in ignorance of conventional Australian modes: younger Australians were starting to look further than England for models, at a time when American popular culture was invading Australian homes and American reactions to the Vietnam War were mirrored by Australians' divided loyalties to their American allies.' (Introduction)
 
1 The Question in Poetry Michael Sharkey , 2016 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Poetic Eye : Occasional Writings 1982-2012 2016; (p. 445-455) 'Some years ago, Pablo Neruda's poems in The Book of Questions were the subject of a Five Islands Press poetry seminar held at Wollongong. Neruda's enigmatic poems, completed shortly before his death in 1973, generally sake the form of several sets of unrhymed couplets, each of which poses a question to which there is no apparent answer. William Daly's 1991 English-language translations appear above the original Spanish versions in an edition published in 2001. (Introduction)
 
1 How Poetry Lines Up Michael Sharkey , 2016 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Poetic Eye : Occasional Writings 1982-2012 2016; (p. 426-442) 'Some poets and critics have claimed that there is no distinction at an between the language of poetry and prose. That claim may lend aid and comfort to readers and writers who see many twenty-first-century unrhymed open poems only as wilfully chopped-up prose in language that is remote from earlier verse-practice. Wordsworth raised similar critical hackles when he claimed to write poetry in simple ballad forms, couched in the real language of men. He didn't write anything of the sort in much of his verse: save for some ballads and lyrics written in language approaching the directness of children's and peasants' speech, much of his philosophical, political, and religious verse is noteworthy for toning-down some of the hackneyed poeticisms that passed for conventional badges of late-eighteenth-century poetry. If he took chances with language that, according to acidulous critics, sometimes led him to reproduce children's babble, his sense of decorum also prompted him to attribute to non-genteel characters a language they never spoke.' (Introduction)
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