Australian poet Dorothy Porter dies in Melbourne

“She had enormous energy and she was a really feisty person. And I think you see that in the way she made her poetry work, in very spare tight verse. And she not only found a readership for her verse novels, she found a very large readership,” Malouf said.

The Australian arts community is mourning the unexpected loss of one its true originals, the writer and poet Dorothy Porter, who died yesterday morning in Melbourne, aged 54, from complications from breast cancer.

Porter is best known for her verse novels, among them The Monkey’s Mask a thriller about a lesbian detective, published in 1994. It won the National Book Council’s Poetry Prize in 1995 and was shortlisted for several other literary awards, before being published in the United States, Canada, Britain and Germany.

A film version, directed by Samantha Lang and starring Susie Porter and Kelly McGillis, was released in Australia in 2001.

Her verse novels What A Piece Work (1999), and Wild Surmise (2003) were shortlisted for Australia’s most prestigious literary prize, the Miles Franklin Award.

Porter’s most recent publication was El Dorado, her fifth verse novel, about a serial child killer. It was nominated for several awards including the inaugural Prime Minister’s Literary Award in 2007, and Best Fiction in the Ned Kelly Awards.

“She had such a vitality and a grasp of life,” said David Malouf, who remembers teaching Porter at Sydney University when she was a first-year student.

“She had enormous energy and she was a really feisty person. And I think you see that in the way she made her poetry work, in very spare tight verse. And she not only found a readership for her verse novels, she found a very large readership,” Malouf said.

“It’s just very sad, and I think there’ll be a lot of people out there who admire her, and are fond of her and will miss her very much.”

Porter, whose talents as a writer found many outlets, including fiction for young adults and libretti for chamber opera, was collaborating on a rock opera called January with Tim Finn at the time of her passing.

“I was extremely shocked and saddened,” Finn said. “We heard this morning. We knew she was ill but we didn’t how ill. She was a very real person, with no bullshit, and this raw honesty. You would want to meet her on that level. Her work was streetwise and sensuous. She could write with heightened language, and never be waffly or precious, and there was always the unexpected image. She was a really great writer.”

via The Sydney Morning Herald | Matthew Buchanan

Dorothy Porter

Porter at Poetry International Web

Australian Humanities Review

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