Peter Minter - Lecturer
Peter Minter is a leading Australian poet, editor and scholar. He was born in Newcastle and shares Scottish, English and Aboriginal ancestry. He is an Arts Honours graduate of the University of Sydney, and he received his MA(Writing) from the University of Technology, Sydney. He is now completing a PhD at UTS in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences.
In 2009 Peter is coordinator of KOCR2600 and KCDE 2104 Introduction to Indigenous Australia, KOCR2602 and KCSE4102 Issues in Indigenous Rights, and KCSE3203 Reading Indigenous Writing. He also teaches across the Koori Centre’s undergraduate, Diploma and Bachelor of Education subjects, such as KOCR2601 Land and Culture, KOCR2603 Indigenous Health and Communities and KOCR2607 Indigenous Creative Expression. He also contributes to the teaching of postgraduate Indigenous Studies in the Faculty of Architecture, Design and Planning, and to postgraduate poetry and poetics programs in the Department of English.
Peter joined the Koori Centre in 2000 following successful academic appointments at the University of Newcastle and the University of Western Sydney, Nepean. In 1991 he tutored at the Wollotuka School of Aboriginal Studies, University of Newcastle, and from 1992 until 2000 he held a range of professional positions at UWS. At the Durali Aboriginal Centre, UWS Nepean, he was at first a tutor in the Aboriginal Unistart program. He was appointed coordinator of the Aboriginal Tutorial Assistance Scheme (ATAS) in 1993, and then coordinator of the Aboriginal Unistart program in 1995. In 1996 he was appointed Coordinator of Academic Programs at Durali, a position he held until 2000. During this time he was a founding member in the development team of the UWS Aboriginal Studies major, and wrote the first undergraduate subject at UWS in Indigenous literature: ‘Writing Black’. Throughout this time he also lectured in the UWS Nepean mainstream Unistart program, and in the UWS Nepean International Students’ Foundation Studies program. He was Acting Coordinator of Continuing Education West and UWS Nepean International Foundation Studies in 1995-96.
Peter's principal teaching and research activities are in cross-cultural poetics and aesthetics, especially as they apply to theories of ecology, ethics, subjectivity and justice. His critical and theoretical writing engages with Australian poetry and poetics, focusing particularly upon genealogies and exemplars of innovation and resistance, and with Australian and international Indigenous poetries and arts. At present he brings to both milieu a critical examination of ecopoetics and ecocriticism, and a political consideration of the counter-colonial function of Aboriginal literatures and arts. He has presented his scholarly and creative work at numerous national and international conferences, writers' festivals and seminars, including the Cambridge Conference of Contemporary Poetics in both 2000 and 2003, the conference of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature in 2000, the Contemporary Writing Environments conference at Brunel University London in 2004, the Poetics of Australian Space conference in Sydney 2005 and the Poetry and the Trace conference hosted by Monash University at the State Library of Victoria in 2008. Between 1995 and 2009 he has also been a guest at numerous literary and arts festivals, such as the Australian Poetry Festivals, the Newcastle Young Writers’ Festival, the Queensland Poetry Festival, the Darwin WordStorm Festival, and the Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney Writers' Festivals. Most recently, he was a guest speaker at the University of Melbourne 2009 Festival of Ideas.
Peter is a highly regarded, multi-award winning poet who has published creative and critical work in a wide range of national and international electronic and print journals, magazines and anthologies. His first book Rhythm in a Dorsal Fin was shortlisted for the 1996 New South Wales Premiers’ Kenneth Slessor Poetry Prize, he received the Marten Bequest Travelling Scholarship for Poetry in 1999, and in 2000 he was awarded The Age Poetry Book of the Year for Empty Texas. In 2006 he published his fifth volume of poems, blue grass, with the Cambridge UK publisher, Salt Publishing. He was founding editor of the Varuna New Poetry broadsheet, a founding editor of Cordite Poetry and Poetics Review, co-editor of Calyx: 30 Contemporary Australian Poets, and poetry editor of Meanjin from 2000 to 2005. He has guest edited two special editions of Meanjin: ‘Poetics’ in 2001 and 'Blak Times: Indigenous Australia' in 2006, and his work is anthologised in The Penguin Book of Modern Australian Poetry and The Penguin Book of Australian Poetry.
Peter is an Honorary Associate of the Centre for the Macquarie Pen Anthology of Australian Literature, Macquarie University, and is a co-editor of both the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature and, with Dr Anita Heiss, the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Aboriginal Literature, for which they were awarded the 2008 “Deadly” award for an Outstanding Contribution to Aboriginal Literature. He is also a University of Sydney Chief Investigator for the ARC Linkage Grant supported “AustLit: The Australian Literature Resource” consortium and its “BlackWords” project.
Prizes, awards and grants
2008: “Deadly” Award for an Outstanding Contribution to Aboriginal Literature for the Macquarie Pen Anthology of Aboriginal Literature, with co-editor Dr. Anita Heiss.
2008: University of Sydney, International Program Development Fund: for Espejo De Tierra: Earth Mirror, an anthology of Chilean Mapuche and Australian Aboriginal poetry and art, with the Chilean Embassy, Australia, $2,500 as editor.
2008: ARC Linkage: “AustLit: The Australian Literature Resource” consortium, $650,000 as Chief Investigator.
2007: ARC Linkage “AustLit: The Australian Literature Resource” consortium, $500,000 as Chief Investigator.
2007: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts Board, Australia Council for the Arts: for the Macquarie Pen Anthology of Aboriginal Literature, $65,000 as editor.
2007-2009: ARC Linkage: Macquarie University and Allen & Unwin, for the Macquarie Pen Anthology of Australian Literature, $250,000 as editor.
2007-2008: Literature Board, Australia Council for the Arts: New Work Fellowship, $60,000.
2004-2007: Australian Postgraduate Award, PhD, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Technology, Sydney.
2003: Literature Board, Australia Council for the Arts: Presentation and Promotion Grant for the Sydney Poetry Network (as co-director).
2002: Literature Board, Australia Council for the Arts: Developing Writer’s New Work Grant, $25,000.
2002: Literature Board, Australia Council for the Arts: Presentation and Promotion Grant for the Sydney Poetry Network (as co-director).
2001: Literature Board, Australia Council for the Arts: Developing Writer’s New Work Grant.
2000: The Age Poetry Book of the Year, awarded to Empty Texas.
1999: Marten Bequest Travelling Scholarship, Poetry, $18,000.
1997: Australia Council for the Arts, Foundation Grant for Cordite Poetry and Poetics Review, $25,000.
1997: NSW Ministry for the Arts, Cordite Poetry and Poetics Review Production Grant.
1996: NSW Premier’s Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry shortlist, Rhythm in a Dorsal Fin.
Book Publications:
2006: blue grass, Salt Publishing, Cambridge, England. [ISBN 1 84471 246 X]
2003: Morning, Hyphen, Equipage Press, Cambridge, England. [ISBN 1 900968 66 5]
1999: Empty Texas, Paper Bark Press, Brooklyn. [ISBN 90 5704 036 0]
1995: Rhythm in a Dorsal Fin, Five Islands Press, Wollongong. [ISBN 1 875604 32 4]
Chapbook Publications:
1999: Morning, Hyphen (selected) Vagabond Press, Sydney.
As Editor, Anthology Publications:
2009: The Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature, WW Norton, NYC. Co-editor.
2009: The Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature, Allen & Unwin, Sydney. Co-editor.
2008: Espejo De Tierra: Earth Mirror, an anthology of Chilean Mapuche and Australian Aboriginal poetry and art, with the Chilean Embassy, Australia. [ISBN 978 0 646 49303 9]
2008: The Macquarie PEN Anthology of Aboriginal Literature, McGill-Queen’s University Press, Canada. Co-editor. [ISBN 978 0 7735 3459 9]
2008: The Macquarie PEN Anthology of Aboriginal Literature, Allen & Unwin. Co-editor. [ISBN 978 1 74175 438 4]
2000: Calyx: 30 Contemporary Australian Poets, Paper Bark Press, Brooklyn. Co-editor. [ISBN 1 876749 18 0]
As Editor, Journal Publications:
2009: Angelaki: The Journal of the Theoretical Humanities (Routledge, UK), “Ecopoetics and Pedagogy” special issue. Co-editor. [ISSN 0969-725x]. Forthcoming.
2006: Meanjin, ‘Indigenous Australia’ issue, (vol. 65, no. 1), Guest Editor. 2006. [ISSN 0025-6293]
2001: Meanjin, ‘Poetics’ issue (vol. 60, no. 2), special commissioning editor. 2001 [ISSN 0025-6293]
2000-2005: Meanjin, Poetry Editor.
1997-1999: Cordite Poetry and Poetics Review, founding co-editor, designer and publisher, Sydney. [ISSN 1328-2107]
1994-1998: Varuna New Poetry broadsheet, editor and designer, Katoomba. [ISSN 1326-8120]
Refereed Publications and Conference Papers:
2008: “Plastic Weather: The Trash Vortex, Synthetic Romanticism and Ecopoetics”, at Poetry and the Trace, Monash University, July 14 2008
2005: Minter, P. and Fagan, K., “‘More Easily Erased’: exile, colonisation and genealogies in John Tranter’s The Alphabet Murders.” delivered at Poetics of Australian Space, University of Sydney and Art Gallery of NSW, 10th-13th February.
2005: Minter, P. and Fagan, K., “‘More Easily Erased’: exile, colonisation and genealogies in John Tranter’s The Alphabet Murders.” Forthcoming in The Salt Companion to John Tranter, edited by Dr Rod Mengham, Salt Publishing, UK. [ISBN-10: 1876857765]
2004: Minter, P., ‘Phenomenal Australian Poetics: Jean-Luc Nancy’s ‘Same time/Same place’ and signs of Aboriginal co-appearance in TGH Strehlow’s Songs of Central Australia.’ Delivered at Contemporary Writing Environments, Brunel University, London, UK, 8th-10th July.
2004: Minter, P., ‘Phenomenal Australian Poetics: Jean-Luc Nancy’s ‘Same time/Same place’ and signs of Aboriginal co-appearance in TGH Strehlow’s Songs of Central Australia.’ Delivered at Cross Fertilisations: Literature, Science and Nature, University College, Chichester, UK, 16th-17th July.
2000: Minter, P., ‘John Kinsella’s Poetics of Hybridity’, in Fairly Obsessive: Essays on the Works of John Kinsella, edited by Rod Mengham and Glen Phillips, Centre for Studies in Australian Literature, in association with Fremantle Arts Centre Press, Nedlands, Western Australia. pp. 144-158.
Other Key Publications:
- Reviews:
2005: ‘A Radical Tonic’, review of Minyung Woolah Binnung: What Saying Says by Lionel Fogarty, and Smoke Encrypted Whispers by Samuel Wagan Watson, The Australian Book Review, no. 268, February 2005, p. 53.
2002: ‘When All is Said and Seen’, review of Afterimages by Robert Gray, The Sydney Morning Herald, 29th-30th June 2002, Spectrum, p.11.
2001: ‘Star Witnesses in the Court for Owls’, review of Gwen Harwood, Selected Poems: A New Edition, edited by Gregory Kratzmann, and In Her Strapless Dresses [and] Mud in My Tears by Lily Brett, The Sydney Morning Herald 3rd-4th November 2001, Spectrum, p.12.
2001: ‘Ethane Moments’, review of Other Worlds: Poems 1997-2001 by Dorothy Porter, Australian Book Review, no. 234, September 2001, pp. 53-54.
‘Untitled Review’, review of Running with Light by Luke Davies, Heat, no 12, pp. 252-254.
‘Untitled Review’, review of In the Cage of Love’s Gradings by Martin Langford, Heat, no. 9, pp. 173-178.
- Poetry published in the following magazines, newspapers and journals:
The Age, Avernus, The Atlanta Review (USA), The Australian, The Australian Book Review, Boxkite, The Chicago Review (USA), Cordite, The Cortland Review (USA), ecopoetics (USA), foam:e, Freeverse (USA), Fulcrum (USA), Hobo, Heat, hutt, Island, Jacket, The Literary Review (USA), Masthead, Meanjin, Overland, papertiger, Picador New Writing 4, poetryetc (UK), Poetry International (USA), Poetry Review (UK), The Prague Review, Salt, Salt-lick Quarterly, Slope (USA), Southerly, Stand (UK), The Sydney Morning Herald, Verse (USA), Westerly, Zoland (USA).
- Poetry anthologised in:
The Penguin Anthology of Australian Poetry, edited by John Kinsella, 2008. [ISBN 9780143008736].
The Best Australian Poetry 2006, edited by Judith Beveridge, UQP.
The Best Australian Poems 2005, edited by Les Murray, Black Inc, Melbourne. pp. 113-115.
Verse: The Second Decade, edited by Brian Henry and Andrew Zawacki, University of Georgia, USA. 2004. pp. 374-376.
The Best Australian Poems 2003, edited by Peter Craven, Black Inc, Melbourne. pp. 226-234.
The Penguin Book of Modern Australian Poetry, edited by Philip Mead and John Tranter, Melbourne. 2003. pp. 425-426.
New Music: An Anthology of Contemporary Australian Poetry, edited by John Leonard, Five Islands Press, Wollongong. 2001. pp. 28-29.
Calyx: 30 Contemporary Australian Poets, edited by Michael Brennan and Peter Minter, Paper Bark Press, Brooklyn. 2000. pp. 209-227.
Landbridge Contemporary Australian Poetry, edited by John Kinsella, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, Fremantle. 1999. pp. 221-226.
Picador New Writing 4, edited by Nicholas Jose and Beth Yahp, Pan Macmillan, Sydney. 1997.
Contact Details
Phone: (02) 9351 7004
Toll Free: 1800 622 742
Fax: (02) 9351 6924
Location: Room 214 Old Teachers College
Email: peteminter@usyd.edu.au