Barry Hill (Australian writer)

Barry Hill (born 1943) is an Australian historian, writer, and academic.^[1]

He has written poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and libretti. He is known for his biography of anthropologist Ted Strehlow, called Broken Song: T G H Strehlow and Aboriginal Possession, published in 2002.

Hill was born in Melbourne.^[2]

He studied at the University of Melbourne, gaining his Bachelor of Arts (BA), Bachelor of Education (BEd) and a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) and from there went to London, where he gained his Master of Arts (MA) degree from the University of London.^[1]

Hill has worked in both Melbourne and London. In London he worked for the Times Literary Supplement.^[1]

In 1975 Hill became a full-time writer. As of 2008^[update] he was poetry editor of The Australian newspaper.^[2]

Hill was part of the cast in the first public performance of Kenneth G. Ross's important Australian play Breaker Morant: A Play in Two Acts, presented by the Melbourne Theatre Company at the Melbourne Athenaeum on 2 February 1978.^[3]

Hill has produced performance works for radio, including Desert Canticles, that premiered on ABC Radio on 5 February 2001.^[4][5] Hill is quoted as saying the piece was inspired by the following:

"Desert Canticles arises out of a marriage, a decade of travelling, and some years writing the literary biography of T.G.H. Strehlow out of Central Australia. I was writing my own poems out of love and the landscape, while trying to fathom Strehlow's great achievement in Songs of Central Australia. So the notion of translation as a metaphor for relationship – with place, with others, and with songs of different cultures (Hebraic, Buddhist, and Aboriginal) became a natural one upon which to thread a radio work."^[4]

• 1991 New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction, for Sitting In^[6]
• 1994 New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry for Ghosting William Buckley^[7]
• 2003 Victorian Premier's Literary Award Non-Fiction award for Broken Song: T G H Strehlow and Aboriginal Possession^[8]
• 2004 New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards NSW Premier's Biennial Prize for Literary Scholarship for Broken Song: T.G.H. Strehlow and Aboriginal Possession^[9]
• 2004 Victorian Premier's Literary Award, the Alfred Deakin Prize for an Essay Advancing Public Debate for The Mood We're In: circa Australia Day 2004^[10]
• 2004 National Biography Award for Broken Song: T G H Strehlow and Aboriginal Possession^[11]
• 2004 Tasmania Pacific Bicentenary History Award for Broken Song: T G H Strehlow and Aboriginal Possession^[12]
• 2005 Victorian Community History Awards for Best Print/Publication, with and the Borough of Queenscliffe, for The Enduring Rip: A History of Queenscliffe^[13]
• 2012 Shortlisted for 2012 Forward Prize for Naked Clay^[14]

Hill is married to Rose Bygrave, a member of the band Goanna, and lives in Queenscliffe, Victoria.^[15]

Poetry

• Raft: Poems 1983–1990 (Penguin, 1990)
• Ghosting William Buckley (Heinemann, 1993)
• The Inland Sea (Salt Publishing, 2001)
• Necessity: Poems 1996–2006 (soi3 modern poets, 2007)
• As We Draw Ourselves (Five Islands Press, 2008)
• Lines for Birds (UWA, 2011)
• Naked Clay (Shearsman, 2012)
• Kind Fire (Arcadia, 2020)

Short stories

• A Rim of Blue (McPhee Gribble, 1978)
• Headlocks & Other Stories (McPhee Gribble, 1983)

Novels

• The Schools (Penguin, 1977)
• Near the Refinery (McPhee Gribble, 1980)
• The Best Picture (McPhee Gribble, 1988)

Non-fiction

• Sitting In (Heinemann, 1991)
• The Rock: Travelling to Uluru (Allen & Unwin, 1994)
• The Enduring Rip: A History of Queenscliffe (MUP, 2004)

Essays

• The Mood We're In: circa Australia Day 2004. Overland 77.

Biography

• Broken Song: T G H Strehlow and Aboriginal Possession (Knopf-Random House 2002)

Libretti

• The Dark (Southern Cross University – University Library Lismore collection, 1999)^[16]
• Desert Canticles, Veronica Dobson (performer), Elena Kats-Chernin (composer) (Australian Music Centre, 2001)
• Song of Songs, music by Andrew Schultz (Australian Music Centre)
• Love Strong as Death: a New Song of Songs, composer Andrew Schultz, performed at 'The Studio', The Sydney Opera House, May 2004^[2]

Political philosophy

• Peacemongers 2014

• "Dr Barry Hill, ARC Postdoctoral Research Fellow, English Literary Studies". University of Melbourne, Faculty of Arts – School of Culture and Communication. Archived from the original on 20 July 2008. Retrieved 12 July 2008.
• "Agent details – Hill, Barry". Austlit. Retrieved 12 July 2008.
• "Barry Hill, books and texts". Music Australia. Retrieved 12 July 2008.
• "Five Islands Press Authors". 5 Islands Press. Archived from the original on 19 July 2008. Retrieved 12 July 2008.

• Wallace-Crabb, Chris (June 2011). "'Free as the hawks above us' : art in the happenstance of the organic". Australian Book Review (332): 46–47. Review of Lines for birds.