Dr Peter Kirkpatrick
BA (Hons) UNSW MA (Hons) PhD Sydney
Senior Lecturer
+61 2 9351 2270
Room N324, John Woolley Building (A20)
My research is in Australian literature and cultural history. I'm especially interested in poetry, and in particular its uses and transformations within popular culture over the last hundred years. A century ago poetry possessed a communal, frequently oral and performative dimension that has now largely disappeared. My research project on the public roles of poetry in Australia seeks to understand how this happened, and to explore modernity’s impact on the everyday life of literary forms. Intersecting with this, I'm writing a book on literary modernism in Sydney, with chapters on a variety of poets and fiction writers from Henry Lawson to Patrick White. I've published two collections of verse, and am working towards a third. I have taught across a wide range of English and Australian literature, as well as literary theory. My postgraduate supervision has included literary and cultural history, Indigenous Australian writing, poetry and poetics, and creative writing.
Research areas
- Australian literature and cultural history
- Poetry and popular culture
- Poetry and poetics
- Modernity and modernism
- Creative writing
Research groups
Current projects
- The Everyday Life of Poetry in Australia: a history of the public culture/s of poetry, taking in readership, education, performance (elocution), publishing and the mass media.
- Sydney Literary Modernism 1890-1970: an exploration of the relationships between modernity, popular culture and "high" literature.
Publications 2005-2011
Books
- Kirkpatrick, P, Dixon, R W (eds.) [in press], Republics of Letters: Literary Communities in Australia, Sydney University Press, Sydney
- De Groen, F, Kirkpatrick, P J (eds.) 2009, Serious Frolic: Essays on Australian Humour, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia
- Kirkpatrick, P J 2007, The Sea Coast of Bohemia: Literary Life in Sydney's Roaring Twenties, API Network, Perth
- Kirkpatrick, P J 2006, Westering, Puncher and Wattmann (poetry)
Journal articles
- Kirkpatrick, P J 2010, Life and Love and 'Lasca', Sydney Studies in English, 36(2010), 127-149
- Kirkpatrick, P J 2007, The Strange Death of Australian Literature, Australian Author, 39(1), 20-23
- Kirkpatrick, P J 2006, Hunting the Wild Reciter: elocution and the art of recitation, Journal of Australian Studies (JAS), 88, 27-39
- Kirkpatrick, P J 2005, Badly hurt and beautifully loved: the poetry of John Laws, HEAT, 10, 55-72
Book chapters
- Kirkpatrick, P, (in press) Jindy Modernist: The Jindyworobaks as Avant Garde, Republics of Letters: Literary Communities in Australia, Sydney University Press, Sydney
- Kirkpatrick, P J 2009, 'We are but dust, add water and we are mud': the comic language of 'Here's Luck', Serious Frolic: Essays on Australian Humour, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 97-109
- De Groen, F, Kirkpatrick, P J 2009, Introduction: A saucer of vinegar, Serious Frolic: Essays on Australian Humour, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, xv-xxviii
- Kirkpatrick, P J 2009, Introduction, A.B. Paterson's The Man from Snowy River and Other Verses, Sydney University Press/Australian Classics Library, Sydney, vii-xi
- Kirkpatrick, P J 2009, 'New words come tripping slowly': poetry, popular culture and modernity 1890-1950, The Cambridge History of Australian Literature, Cambridge University Press, Australia, 199-222
- Kirkpatrick, P J 2008, Henry Lawson, Australian Greats, William Heinemann, North Sydney, 49-52
- Kirkpatrick, P J 2007, Hunting the Wild Reciter: Elocution and Art of Recitation, Talking and Listening in the Age of Modernity - Essays on the History of Sound, ANU E Press, Canberra, 1, 59-71