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Curriculum Vitae

Keith Edward Harrison

PERSONAL

Born January 29, 1932, Melbourne, Australia.  Present Address: 1812 15th Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN 55057                      

EDUCATION

  • Fort Street Boys' High School, Sydney, 1943-1947.
  • Trinity Grammar School, Melbourne,1947-1949.
  • University of Melbourne, 1952-54. Graduated, B.A. in English and French.
  • University of of Iowa, 1966-67. Graduated, M. A. in English.

PROFESSIONAL AND ACADEMIC EXPERIENCE

  • 1954-57: Warrnambool High School, Victoria, Australia. Teacher of French and English.
  • 1958-1966:  part- and full-time teacher and lecturer at various institutions in London, including The City Literary Institute.
  • 1958-1966: freelance poet, journalist and broadcaster in London, including work as a regular poetry and book reviewer for The Spectator.
  • 1963-1965: Tutor in English, University of London, Department of Extra-Mural Studies.
  • 1966: Visiting Poet and Graduate Assistant in English, University of Iowa.
  • 1966-1968: Lecturer in English, York University, Toronto.
  • 1968-1988: Assistant, then Associate, then Full Professor (with tenure) and, since 1986, Writer-in-Residence,  Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota.
  • 1983: Visiting Professor of English, Monash University, Melbourne.
  • 1996: Visiting Distinguished Lecturer, Flinders Street School of Music, Adelaide

ADMINISTRATIVE EXPERIENCE

  • Chief Administrator and Producer of the first Poets in Public readings, Edinburgh International Festival, 1965.
  • Director of the Interdisciplinary Arts Program, Carleton College, 1969-1980.
  • Editor-in-Chief, The Carleton Miscellany, 1977-1981.
  • Member of the Governing Board, WCAL Radio Station, 1984-1988.

AWARDS AND FELLOWSHIPS

  • Canada Council Grant for Research on Australian Literature, 1968.
  • British Council Award for Songs from the Drifting House  (poems), 1972.
  • Fellowship in Literature, Minnesota State Arts Council, 1974.
  • Senior Research Fellowship for studies in Australian and American Poetry, 1975.
  • Bush Foundation Fellowship for Poetry (Minnesota), 1978-1979.
  • Faculty Summer Award, Carleton College, for translation of Catullus, 1981.
  • Major Faculty Development Award, Bush Foundation, Carleton College, 1983 for work on a collection of poems.
  • Southeast Minnesota Arts Council Award for experimental work, with Stephen McKinstry, on a narrative for radio, 1986.

 

2. PUBLICATIONS                

BOOKS   (Poetry and Translation)

Points in a Journey. Pennsylvania: Dufour, 1966 &London: Macmillan, 1966.
Two Variations on a Ground. (limited edition) London: Turret Books, 1967.
Songs from the Drifting House. London: Macmillan, 1972.
The Basho Poems. (hand-printed edition). Iowa City: The Cyathus Press, 1975.
The Basho Poems. (revised trade edition). Minneapolis: The Nodin Press, 1981.
Sans Frontieres. ( from the French of H. A. Bouraoui.), Montreal, Francite,1979.
A Town and Country Suite. (limited edition). Minneapolis, Sternum Press, 1980.
The Sense of Falling. Minneapolis: Black Willow Press, 1980
At the Wedding of Peleus and Thetis: Catullus #64. (with Linda Clader). A verse translation, with notes.  Minneapolis: Black Willow Press, 1980.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.  Verse translation, with introduction. London: The Folio Society, 1983.
A Burning of Applewood. New & Selected Poems, Northfield: Black Willow Press, 1988.
Words Against War. Northfield: Black Willow Press, 1996
The Complete Basho Poems. Northfield: Black Willow Press, 2002
CHANGES: New & Selected Poems, 1962-2002. Northfield: Black Willow Press, 2002

FORTHCOMING, OR IN PREPARATION

How to Stop Your Papers from Killing You (and Me)  Text. Northfield: Black Willow Press, 2007
Like A Dancer: How Poems are Made and How We Read Them (Text)
Not Quite Ithaka. Encounters on the Way, an Experimental Memoir

POEMS PUBLISHED

Individual poems, sequences and translations have appeared in the following: The Age  (Melbourne); The Atlantic Monthly; The Carleton Miscellany; The New Statesman; The New York Times; The Observer  (London); Poetry (Australia); Poetry Singapore; Quadrant  (Sydney); The Scotsman; The Spectator;  The Toronto Telegram; Westerly  (Perth); The Western Humanities Review (Utah); The Western Mail; Aquarius (London); Poetry Northwest; The Great River Review; Meanjin; The Australian (Sydney); Island  (Tasmania), The Australian Book Review, and others.

REPRESENTATION IN ANTHOLOGIES  

New Poems (P.E.N.), 1962; Best Poems (Borestone Mountain), 1964; Young Commonwealth Poets '65; Winter Tales for Children, 3 (1967); Junior Voices (Penguin), 1970; Australian Poetry, 1959, 1961, 1963, 1971; Australian Voices, 1975; 25 Minnesota Poets, 2, 1975; Two Hundred Years of Australian Poetry  (Oxford, 1988.) Best Australian Poetry, 2005 (University of Queensland Press, 2005) Best Australian Poems, 2006 (Black Inc, 2006).

TELEVISION INTERVIEW

A half-hour television interview on my own work (interviewer Kevin Crossley-Holland) was recorded by Hennepin County Library in November 1989, and broadcast on Channel 6, Twin Cities in March 1990 

BROADCASTS   (Poems and Translations)

  • The Water Man, a narrative for radio, was originally brodacast over WCAL St. Olaf College, in July, 1981 and subsequently on BBC Radio 3 in February, 1983. An Australian performance of this piece was broadcast on Australian National Radio in March 1983.
  • A radio version of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, based on my Folio Society translation, was broadcast on over 50 stations in the U.S. Public Broadcasting Network in late 1983 and early 1984. The four hour-long broadcasts included mediaeval music and discussions of the poem by scholars and critics. A folio containing tapes of the broadcasts, with study notes, was published by WCAL in 1984.
  • Other broadcasts of my own poems and translations have been given on:
    •    The BBC Third Programme (1961, 1963, 1985, 1986 [repeated] )
    •    WSUI (Iowa City)
    •    All India Radio  (1969)
    •    The Poet's Tongue (ABC. Sydney) 1968,1972,1975,1976,1982.

OTHER RADIO WORK 

  • Interviews on my work have been broadcast on the ABC  on the National Program Variations (with  Dagmar Strauss), July 1976; on WCAL (St. Olaf College), several  times, and an interview by Sally Gillies was published in Luna, Melbourne in July 1978.
  • Poetry and the Law, July, 1976: a talk given on the ABC National Radio's Guest of  Honor.
  • The New American Poetry  (with Bill Sherman), was broadcast on the BBC Third Programme in April, 1965.
  • Interviews with W.H. Auden, Jon Silkin, Stevie Smith and others were arranged and conducted by me at the Edinburgh International Festival in August, 1965, and broadcast on the ABC.
  • Since June, 1986, I have given over thirty short broadcasts on W.C.A.L. on language and literature in a program called A Manner of Speaking.

CRITICISM, REVIEW-ARTICLES, REVIEWS

  • Reviewed new poetry for The Spectator, London, between 1962 &1965.
  • No Things but in Ideas: Dr. Williams and Mr. Pound,  Dalhousie Review, XLVIII: 4,1967, pp.577-580.
  • Poetry Chronicle, The Tamarack Review, Winter, 1967, pp. 70-77.
  • A Matter of Tuning: Some Notes on the Teaching of Creative Writing. Minnesota Journal of English, IX: 1, Winter, 1973.
  • Out There and In Here: Berryman, Ponge and Transtromer. The Carleton Miscellany, XIII: 2,Spring/ Summer, 1973, pp.111-117.
  • Tomas Tranströmer in English: Some Notes. Ironwood Magazine, 13, April 1979, pp.13-24.
  • A Shropshire Lad. Folio (Magazine of the Folio Society), Autumn, 1986, pp.14-17.
  • A Man, a Woman and a Blackbird. Unpublished paper circulated at a conference on environmental education, Beloit College, March 1994.
  • The Geist in the Mirror, Harold Stewart, James McAuley and the Art of Translation, Australian Book Review, March 2006, pp. 64-68

READINGS 

Bemidji State University; Carleton College (yearly); Carleton University (Ottawa); University of Chicago; University of Connecticut, Storrs; City Hall, Toronto; Commonwealth Arts Festival (London); University of Dallas; Fellowship of Australian Writers (Melbourne); Gustavus Adolphus College; Interlochen Arts Academy; La Trobe University, Melbourne; The Loft, Minneapolis; Manhattanville College, N.Y.;  University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; University of Minnesota; Newman Center (Minneapolis); Monash University, Melbourne); Outposts (Dulwich, London); St. Olaf College; St. Thomas College, St. Paul; University of Tennessee, Chattanooga University of Texas (at Arlington and at Dallas); University of Toronto; Walker Art Center; William Jewell College; York University, Toronto; Sacred Heart College, Geelong, Victoria — and many other colleges and institutions throughout the English-speaking world.

EDITORIAL WORK

  • Editor of Australian Section of Young Commonwealth Poets,'65, London, Heinemann, '65.
  • Editor and designer of the Poets in Public  booklet for the International Readings at the Edinburgh International Festival, 1965.
  • Editor-in-Chief of The Carleton Miscellany, 1977-1980.
  • Editor and contributor to Plain Songs, an anthology of poetry and prose by Carleton College Faculty, Carleton College, Northfield, 1990

SPECIAL POSITIONS

  • Writer-in-Residence for the Kansas City Council for Higher Education in the Spring , 1976. Gave readings and lectured at over 20 colleges in the region.
  • With  Australian poet, Philip Martin, gave readings of our own work in the William Vaughn Moody Lecture Series at the University of Chicago in May, 1982. (Previous lecturers in this series include Igor Stravinsky, W.B. Yeats, Ralph Vaughn Williams).
  • In February, 1983 I was offered the position of Marbrook Distinguished Visiting Lecturer at Macalester College St. Paul) but was unable to accept because of family concerns in Australia.
  • From 1971-1980 I worked occasionally in the Minnesota Poets-in-the-Schools Program.
  • In October, 1986 I was invited to be a member of the Literature Awards Panel of the Minnesota State Arts Board, and accepted for a three-year period.

TEACHING AT CONFERENCES

I have been Writer-in-Residence and visiting teacher at a number of writing conferences including Bemidji State University (1979), University of Minnesota (Quadna) 1980, University of Minnesota, Rochester, (1982), and Winona State University (1983).

LISTED IN

The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature
International Who's Who in Poetry