Dennis Haskell

Australian Poet and Literary Scholar

Australian Poet and Literary Scholar

Dennis Haskell

DENNIS HASKELL is the author of 9 collections of poetry, the most recent And Yet… (WA Poets Publishing, 2020) and Ahead of Us (Fremantle Press, 2016) plus 14 volumes of literary scholarship and criticism and many literary essays. Haskell was Co-editor of Westerly magazine from 1985-2009 and is an Emeritus Professor and Senior Honorary Research Fellow at The University of Western Australia. He is the recipient of the Western Australia Premier’s Prize for Poetry, the A A Phillips Prize for a distinguished contribution to Australian literature (from the Association for the Study of Australian Literature), and of an … Read more about Dennis Haskell

News and Events

Workshop on Poetic Form

As part of the Perth Poetry Festival Dennis will be giving a workshop with fellow poet Annamaria Weldon. It will be from 11.30am-1.00pm, Saturday 19 September in the Queens Building (level 1, 57 William St, Perth City): Poetic Form: What is it and What’s it to You? The history of English language poetry has … Read more about Workshop on Poetic Form

An antipodean Larkin with good manners, Haskell is a new kind of Australian poet, a mile-high-sky traveller, speeding on trains, stepping over countries, a 21st century transnational whose poems feel their way into an 'ordinariness' he has set as his goal.

Shirley Geok-lin Lim

The poems are astonishingly brave, and painful, even cruel, but never for a moment, for all their passionate feeling, either self-indulgent or self-regarding… It makes for painful reading, but is also a kind of liberation.

David Malouf (personal correspondence)

Haskell's shaping of language is highly skilful ... the language is heightened just that notch at the appropriate moment ... for the poetry to singe the reader's senses, jolt the mind or open a new window of perception on to the world.

Rod Moran

Biography

Dennis Haskell was born into a working class family in the western suburbs of Sydney; his father was a carpenter (d.1983) and his mother (d.2017) a florist. He attended primary schools in Croydon, Auburn West and Berala, before going on to Homebush Boys High School. He completed a Commerce degree at the University of New South Wales and worked as an accountant or lecturer in business studies for almost a decade, in Sydney and London. He travelled … Read more about Biography