Australian
Australian(s) may refer to:
Australia
* Australia, a country
* Australians, citizens of the Commonwealth of Australia
** European Australians
** Anglo-Celtic Australians, Australians descended principally from British colonists
** Aboriginal Aus ...
poet
A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator (thought, thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral t ...
,
short story
A short story is a piece of prose fiction. It can typically be read in a single sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the old ...
writer,
critic
A critic is a person who communicates an assessment and an opinion of various forms of creative works such as Art criticism, art, Literary criticism, literature, Music journalism, music, Film criticism, cinema, Theater criticism, theater, Fas ...
and
academic
An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of tertiary education. The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, founded approximately 386 BC at Akademia, a sanctuary of Athena, the go ...
primarily known for her autobiographical poem ''Kaddish'', which deals with her identity as a
Jewish
Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...
writer.
Life
Born Julia Fay Rosefield, Zwicky grew up in suburban
Melbourne
Melbourne ( , ; Boonwurrung language, Boonwurrung/ or ) is the List of Australian capital cities, capital and List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city of the States and territories of Australia, Australian state of Victori ...
. Her family was fourth generation Australian—her father, a doctor; her mother, a musician. Zwicky was an accomplished pianist by the age of six, and performed with her violinist and cellist sisters while still at school. After completing her schooling at
Anglican
Anglicanism, also known as Episcopalianism in some countries, is a Western Christianity, Western Christian tradition which developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the ...
institutions, she entered the
University of Melbourne
The University of Melbourne (colloquially known as Melbourne University) is a public university, public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in the state ...
in 1950, receiving her
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts (abbreviated B.A., BA, A.B. or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is the holder of a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the liberal arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts deg ...
in 1954. Descended from European Jews, she described herself as an "outsider" ("I was ashamed of my foreign interloper status") from an "
Anglo-Saxon
The Anglo-Saxons, in some contexts simply called Saxons or the English, were a Cultural identity, cultural group who spoke Old English and inhabited much of what is now England and south-eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. They traced t ...
dominated" Australian culture. She began publishing poetry as an
undergraduate
Undergraduate education is education conducted after secondary education and before postgraduate education, usually in a college or university. It typically includes all postsecondary programs up to the level of a bachelor's degree. For example, ...
, thereafter working as a musician, touring Europe, America and South-East Asia between 1955 and 1965.
She settled in
Perth
Perth () is the list of Australian capital cities, capital city of Western Australia. It is the list of cities in Australia by population, fourth-most-populous city in Australia, with a population of over 2.3 million within Greater Perth . The ...
with her Swiss husband Karl Zwicky (the two married in 1957) and two children (one son, one daughter) and returned to literature working primarily as a Senior Lecturer in American and
comparative literature
Comparative literature studies is an academic field dealing with the study of literature and cultural expression across language, linguistic, national, geographic, and discipline, disciplinary boundaries. Comparative literature "performs a role ...
at the
University of Western Australia
University of Western Australia (UWA) is a public research university in the Australian state of Western Australia. The university's main campus is in Crawley, Western Australia, Crawley, a suburb in the City of Perth local government area. UW ...
until her retirement in 1987. From 1978 to 1981 she was a member of the Literature Board of the
Australia Council
Creative Australia, formerly known as the Australia Council for the Arts and the Australia Council, is the country's official arts council, serving as an arts funding and advisory body for the Government of Australia.
The council was announ ...
in
Sydney
Sydney is the capital city of the States and territories of Australia, state of New South Wales and the List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city in Australia. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Syd ...
. After her retirement she concentrated on her writing, which won her international recognition.''The Age'' (5 May 2007) Newsstore.fairfax.com.au; accessed 2 August 2017.
In 1990, Zwicky married her second husband James Mackie, who died before her. She led a reclusive life in Perth: "I never expect anything. I always think I'm drifting and nobody knows I'm here, and it's great." Theage.com.au, 12 November 2005. In 2004, Fay Zwicky was declared a
Western Australia
Western Australia (WA) is the westernmost state of Australia. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east, and South Australia to the south-east. Western Aust ...
n " Living Treasure", a term she called "repulsive ... like being prematurely obituarized."
Work
Recurrent themes of Zwicky's were the relation between art and the artist, the exploration of the author's Jewish heritage and autobiographical experiences. Her poetry collections won several awards. The committee for the
Patrick White Award
The Patrick White Award is an annual literary prize established by Patrick White. White used his 1973 Nobel Prize in Literature award to establish a trust for this prize.
The $25,000 cash award is given to a writer who has been highly creative o ...
praised Zwicky as "one of Australia's most original and accomplished poets". The ''Cambridge Guide to Literature in English'' describes her style as "densely textured but elegant and direct".
Zwicky's first collection, ''Isaac Babel's Fiddle'' (1975) included a number of poems about her Lithuanian grandfather and his cultural displacement in Australia, which nevertheless saved him from the
Holocaust
The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ...
("Summer Pogrom", "Totem and Taboo"). Zwicky also writes of her own alienation, in spite of her being "whiter than
Persil
Persil (, ) is a German brand of laundry detergent manufactured and marketed by Henkel around the world except in the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Latin America (except Mexico), China, Australia and New Zealand, where it is manufactured an ...
".Zwicky, Fay "Waking" (poem) , ''Poems 1970–1992'', Australian Poetry Library,
The title poem of her most-admired collection, ''Kaddish'' (1982), is an
elegy
An elegy is a poem of serious reflection, and in English literature usually a lament for the dead. However, according to ''The Oxford Handbook of the Elegy'', "for all of its pervasiveness ... the 'elegy' remains remarkably ill defined: sometime ...
for her father who died at sea. In her poem Zwicky uses the
Aramaic
Aramaic (; ) is a Northwest Semitic language that originated in the ancient region of Syria and quickly spread to Mesopotamia, the southern Levant, Sinai, southeastern Anatolia, and Eastern Arabia, where it has been continually written a ...
phrases of the traditional prayer of mourning to frame her own memorial prayer detailing her complex relationship with her father. She draws on the
Haggadah
The Haggadah (, "telling"; plural: Haggadot) is a foundational Jewish text that sets forth the order of the Passover Seder. According to Jewish practice, reading the Haggadah at the Seder table fulfills the mitzvah incumbent on every Jew to reco ...
, the
Passover Seder
The Passover Seder is a ritual feast at the beginning of the Jewish holidays, Jewish holiday of Passover. It is conducted throughout the world on the eve of the 15th day of Nisan in the Hebrew calendar (i.e., at the start of the 15th; a Hebrew d ...
night liturgy. Kaddish "also uses the
Lord’s Prayer
The Lord's Prayer, also known by its incipit Our Father (, ), is a central Christian prayer attributed to Jesus. It contains petitions to God focused on God’s holiness, will, and kingdom, as well as human needs, with variations across manus ...
and invokes God in female form as a goddess. Ivor Indyk describes ''Kaddish'' as "a mosaic of textual citations, of the Kaddish, the Passover Haggadah and numerous allusions to myth and nursery rhyme."
''Ask Me'', Zwicky's third book of poetry, contained poems on China, America, and a series of religious poems on the deities of the
Hindu
Hindus (; ; also known as Sanātanīs) are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism, also known by its endonym Sanātana Dharma. Jeffery D. Long (2007), A Vision for Hinduism, IB Tauris, , pp. 35–37 Historically, the term has also be ...
pantheon ("Ganesh", "Vishnu", "Siva", and the goddess "Devi"). In Zwicky's subsequent books she developed a sparser style of poetry. In the title poem of ''The Gatekeeper’s Wife'' Zwicky wrote of the devastating loss of her husband, and recalls the custom of lighting a memorial candle. In "Losing Track" the death of her husband is linked with the Jewish loss of
Zion
Zion (; ) is a placename in the Tanakh, often used as a synonym for Jerusalem as well as for the Land of Israel as a whole.
The name is found in 2 Samuel (), one of the books of the Tanakh dated to approximately the mid-6th century BCE. It o ...
. The collection included an elegy, "Banksia Blechifolia", for
Primo Levi
Primo Michele Levi (; 31 July 1919 – 11 April 1987) was a Jewish Italian chemist, partisan, Holocaust survivor and writer. He was the author of several books, collections of short stories, essays, poems and one novel. His best-known works i ...
, and "Groundswell for Ginsberg", an homage to
Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg (; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with Lucien Carr, William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of th ...
.
Her last collection of poems, ''Picnic'', published in 2006, included primarily poems about the nature of poetry and the poet's role in the world. Aside from her poetry, Zwicky published a collection of short stories, ''Hostages'', in 1983, and a collection of essays on literature and survival, ''The Lyre in the Pawnshop'', in 1986. In her essays Zwicky traced the ways in which the construction of an Australian literature has served to marginalise minority writers and women. She discussed the absence, until very lately, of any place for a Jewish writer in Australian literature: "Living and growing up in this country has been an exercise in repression".
Death
Zwicky died in
Perth
Perth () is the list of Australian capital cities, capital city of Western Australia. It is the list of cities in Australia by population, fourth-most-populous city in Australia, with a population of over 2.3 million within Greater Perth . The ...
, Western Australia on 2 July 2017, aged 83, two days before her 84th birthday.
Awards and nominations
* 1982 –
Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry
The Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry is awarded annually as part of the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards for a book of collected poems or for a single poem of substantial length published in book form.Western Australian Premier's Book Award for Non-fiction for ''The Lyre in the Pawnshop''
* 1991 – Western Australian Premier's Book Award for Poetry for ''Ask Me''
* 1998 – Western Australian Premier's Book Award for Poetry for ''The Gatekeeper's Wife''
* 2005 – Patrick White Award
* 2006 –
Christopher Brennan Award
The Christopher Brennan Award (formerly known as the Robert Frost Prize after American writer Robert Frost) is an Australian award given for lifetime achievement in poetry. The award, established in 1973, takes the form of a bronze plaque which is ...
of the
Fellowship of Australian Writers
The Fellowship of Australian Writers (FAW) is a collection or federation of state-based organizations aiming to support and promote the interests of Australian writers. It was established in Sydney in 1928, with the aim of bringing writers togethe ...