Shearsman Books

Shearsman Titles

The Lovemakers

About the author

Alan Wearne has been part of the Australian poetry scene since the late sixties and is the author of two verse collections, Public Relations and New Devil, New Parish, Out Here (a verse novella), the award-winning verse novel The Nightmarkets (which has also been adapted for the stage) and Kicking in Danger (a prose fantasy satire on Melbourne's football). In 1999 he hosted Conversations With A Dead Poet, a documentary film on his friend the late poet John Forbes.

The first volume of another verse novel, The Lovemakers, was published by Penguin Australia in March 2001. Reviews were excellent but a tepid 'promotional' campaign by the publishers, and the growing middle-browisation of Australian arts and letters helped ensure that Penguin would not publish the already completed Volume Two. With The Lovemakers Book One winning the NSW Premier's Prize for Poetry (Kenneth Slessor Award), the NSW Premier's Prize Book of the Year and the Arts Queensland Judith Wright Calanthe Award for Australian Poetry, Penguin pulped remaining stocks.

In February 2004, The Lovemakers Book Two was published by ABC Books. Though the reviews were again excellent, any 'promotional' campaign was non-existent. Later that year it co-won The Foundation for Australian Literary Studies’ Colin Roderick Award and H T Priestly Medal. The book has since been pulped. The two volumes are now collected in one very large volume in the Shears,man edition. Alan's new book of poems The Australian Popular Songbook was published by Giramondo in early 2008.

Alan Wearne teaches poetry at the University of Wollongong and lives part of the year in Fremantle. He considers himself a Melbourne poet living in exile.

[Text from Alan Wearne's website. Go here for more information.]