Randolph Stow

Born in Geraldton, Western Australia, he attended the University of Western Australia and later lectured in English Literature at the University of Adelaide, the University of Western Australia and University of Leeds. He has also worked on an aboriginal mission as an anthropoligist and as a patrol officer in the Trobriand Islands.

One of his poems provides a evocative portrait of his home town. Its lines include:

My childhood was seashells and sandalwood, windmills

And yachts in the southerly, ploughshares and keels

Fostered by hills and by waves on the breakwater...

Brief subtle things that a child does not realise,

Horses and porpoises, aloes and clemantis -

Do I idealize?

His novel "To the Islands" won the Miles Franklin Award in 1958. He was awarded the Patrick White Literary Award in 1979.

Selected works

Novels

• A Haunted Land 1956
• The Bystander 1957
• To the Islands 1958 (revised in 1982)
• Tourmaline 1963
• The Merry-Go-Round in the Sea 1965
• Visitants 1979
• The Girl Green as Elderflower 1980
• The Suburbs of Hell 1984

Poetry

• Act One 1957
• Outrider: Poems 1956-1962 1962
• A Counterfeit Silence: Selected Poems of Randolph Stow 1969

Childrens

• Midnite: The Story of a Wild Colonial Boy 1967

Opera

• Eight Songs for a Mad King 1969, libretto
• Miss Donnithorne's Maggot 1974, libretto

Referenced By