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Critics on Alan Gould’s Poetry
‘...The poems of Icelandic Solitaries are invested with the language that precisely yields the texture of their setting — mental and physical. Open his slim volume to any page and you know instantly that here is a poet of the first order — one who makes connections, creates a synthesis of his culture and his insight with a structure appropriate to the subject he is handling.....Gould compels a close reading; he provokes quotation; he encourages thought; he rewards the flexible ear and the remembering eye. These are attributes of an achieved poet; the special combination they form in the work of Alan Gould is rare in native Australian verse.’
— Vernon Young, Parnassus — Poetry In Review (USA) Fall/ Winter 1978.
‘Alan Gould’s Icelandic Solitaries is the most striking collection...due to its consistency of style and tone. Or perhaps it is a broader consistency, one of concern spiritual and social, that develops the book’s impact. Gould’s brooding powers of observation hold the reader’s attention.’
— Pacific Moana Quarterly Oct 1978
‘Astral Sea is a fine collection...containing poetry not only shot through with the magic of the world, but which, to a degree almost unparalleled in contemporary Australian poetry, brings the breadth and variety of the world and its history to our door.’
Dr David Brooks, The Canberra Times . ?/ 4/ 81
‘The distinctive qualities of his voice are admirable ones. The rich aural texture of his lines, his firmly handled verse-forms, and the scope of his diction all indicate an uncommon dedication to the craft of poetry.’
— Gary Catalano, reviewing The Pausing Of The Hours, in The Age, 26/ 5/ 84
‘Poems (in The Twofold Place) with sensuous metaphors mingled with subtle interpenetration for lone Autumn nights. Who would have believed that a poet of such distinction resides in our fair city of Queanbeyan?’
— T.J.McKenna, (auctioneer), Queanbeyan Age, 1986
‘Formerlight....gathers together an attractive wide-ranging group of his best poems, establishing his claim to be one of Australia’s finest contemporary poets.’
— (The Oxford Companion To Australian Literature, Second Edition, 1994)
‘The imaginative scope of his writing is vast, traversing the great journeys of discovery throughout human history and mythology as well as that territory of more immediate, more familiar surroundings, relationships and emotions.’
— Carol Treloar Adelaide Advertiser 1992
‘...There is also the inner search — the questioning of what it means to be human and implicated in time:...Gould is a consummate craftsman of poems as intricate as Celtic or Viking art, and of others, deceptively simple, which make cunning use of space and silence.’
— Jan Owen, Quadrant, Sept 1992
‘Most obviously he is a master of technique, one who is at home with every conceivable variation of form from the challenging sestina to the deceptively easy-looking prose-poem. Unlike the work of some technical virtuosos, Gould’s poems never lack content. He deals with large and timeless subjects, and thus is exempt from the whims of fashion, though he also thus avoids its embrace. It is little wonder he has succeeded as a novelist, as the poems often incline toward narrative, while Gould’s fascination with the intricacies of human motivation are everywhere apparent.’
— Jamie Grant, The Adelaide Review, April 1992.
‘Like Donne or Herbert, the clarity of the lines doesn’t labour the complexity of thought...’
— Philip Hodgins, The Adelaide Review, October 1992
‘In his later writing Gould has preferred the human over the suprahuman, the domestic over the exotic. No longer a poet of dramatic images, he prizes his novelist’s eye for telling detail. That eye can be trained on himself, as in his verse-essays...yet more often his attention is captivated by other people, especially their lyrical absorption in work.’
— Prof. Kevin Hart, The Age, 17/ 10/ 92
‘Always the craftsman himself, Gould matches his verse technique to the technique he’s describing. This, and the democratic sentiment, make these (the ‘work’ poems in Momentum) works to take into schools to show the poem as a thing at home with its achievement, like other well-made products of the workplace.’
— Dr Christopher Pollnitz Sydney Morning Herald ? 1992
‘I suspect I am not the only poet who will wish to have written these lines (from ‘A U Boat Morning 1914’). That image of wheatgrain as ‘fabulous golden blood’ is the product of a breathtakingly audacious imagination.’
— Gary Catelano reviewing Mermaid, in Quadrant October 1996
‘He has always been a skilled and conscientious practitioner of his craft, valuing kinds of verse thought obsolete by those without the dedication to work with them....’Dactyls for a Pounding Head’ is the best hangover poem in our literature.’
— Dr Peter Pierce, The Canberra Times 13/ 3/ 99
‘For a committed free-verser like myself, Gould’s grasp of traditional verse form is dazzling — form as a ludic performance, a virtuoso doing a Paganini...’
— Adam Aitken, Australian Book Review, July 1999
‘...Everywhere you turn in this book (Dalliance And Scorn) some line hurls itself from the page like a trapeze artist... Gould’s virtuosity is a sheer joy...Such technical proficiency, however, is not an end in itself — Gould uses his gift of play to draw the peculiar from the everyday.’
— Stephen McInerney, Quadrant, May 2000
‘‘A Fold In The Light’...is a dramatic and richly imagistic sweep of sea and shore poems that work through narrative and dialogue to question time and death, the nature of memory and what lies beyond our knowledge. Strong rhythms and musicality of diction convey to the reader the exhilaration as well as the danger of life in the last days of sail. The journey by sea is mirrored at a spiritual level by the religious intimations of the poems characters and by their attentiveness to the world. The judges felt the clarity and detail along with the unpredictable leaps of thought give these poems integrity and vision.’
— Judge’s report, Newcastle Prize 2000
‘...Maybe our finest history poet...’
— Les Murray, at the booklaunch of A Fold In The Light, June 2001
Critics on Alan Gould’s Fiction.
‘...unequivocally a stunner,’
— Nancy Keesing on The Man Who Stayed Below in The Australian ?/ ?/ 1984
‘...While telling a wonderfully detailed story of life at sea, Gould also raises hard questions about evil, about why people hurt each other and about the impenetrable motivations for other people’s actions. I don’t think Melville or Conrad would be embarrassed to see this book on the same shelf as their own.’
— On The Man Who Stayed Below in The Washington Post 2/ 1/ 87
‘The Man Who Stayed Below seems to me one of the best crafted first novels produced by an Australian in the past decade.’
— Chris Koch in The Sydney Morning Herald ?/ ?/ 1985
‘There have been some excellent Australian novelists such as White, Kenneally and Stead. I look forward to seeing Gould taking his place in that pantheon on the basis of these very finely wrought novellas.’
— Ian Crichton Smith on The Enduring Disguises in Scotland On Sunday 16/ 10/ 88
‘...Underrated Alan Gould, unable to write the pretentious, politically correct, thinly textured fiction that wins publicity in Australia, has managed at least to construct a finely crafted and substantial novel, To The Burning City. When temperate retrospects become possible, this will be regarded as one of the most accomplished novels of recent years...In a literary world with less rancour, less institutionalised prejudice, less cowardice, Gould’s To The Burning City would be seen as an occasion for pride.
— Peter Pierce, The Canberra Times, 7/ 9/ 91
One of Gould’s many considerable achievements is to have written a ‘conversation’ novel that has the narrative drive of a good thriller....Gould writes with a confident wholeness in language that can soar, but always dusted with earth and navigating in the direction of the narrative.
— John Hanrahan on Close Ups in The Age ?/ ?/ 1994
Gould has set himself against accommodation to literary fashion. His courtly voice is one of the loneliest, but most arresting in modern Australian fiction ‘
— Peter Pierce on The Tazyrik Year in The Canberra Times 11/ 4/ 98
‘...Like the sea, that long-held metaphor for human emotions, his writing encompasses the calmness of the glassy ocean and the emotional turbulence of a storm at sea.’
— Nadine Cresswell-Myatt. on The Schoonermaster’s Dance, The Herald Sun 7/ 10/ 2000
‘...Constructed with a passion for philosophy and ideas as well as a fascination with story, The Schoonermaster’s Dance re-creates the lives of its characters like a documentary. The writing has a delicate wistful tone...a sense of what has already been, and what might have been... This, however, is coupled with a humour and astute observation that builds the characters as full and dense, despite their tenuous presence in the narrative and in time.’
— Penelope Davis, The Courier Mail 4/ 11/ 2000.
Awards For Poetry And Fiction
NSW Premiers Prize for Poetry, 1981, for Astral Sea. (Years Found In Likeness was shortlisted for the same award in 1989.)
Foundation of Australian Literary Studies Medal for the Best Book of the Year, 1985, for The Man Who Stayed Below.
Angus And Robertson 1984 Fellowship for ditto.
National Book Council ‘Banjo’ Award for Fiction 1992 for To The Burning City. (This book was also shortlisted for the Miles Franklin.)
The Phillip Hodgins Memorial Medal For Literature, 1999.
The Royal Blind Society Audio Book Of The Year (for The Tazyrik Year,) 1999.
CJ Dennis Peace Prize, 2000
Courier Mail Book-of-the year (Co-winner with Peter Carey)
ACT Book of The Year 2001 (Co-winner with Dorothy Johnston).
ACT Critics Circle Award 2001.
(The Three awards were for The Schoonermaster’s Dance).
2nd Place, Newcastle Poetry Prize, 2000.
Shortlisting for Age Book of the Year 1985 with The Man Who Stayed Below, and 1998 with The Tazyrik Year.
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