Poet
Jaya Savige
Jaya Savige
(Australia, 1978)
© Jaya Savige
Biography
About Jaya Savige's latecomers, David Malouf writes, “The poems [...] go beyond what we take for granted these days in a first collection: refinement of language and cadence, allusiveness, wit. Moving easily through abstract wonders and the streets of the inner city, they return for nourishment to family and ‘the Island’ – [of] Bribie, its fishing-life and beaches – as a test always of what is native and endures.” Savige was born in Sydney in 1978, and grew up on Bribie Island in Moreton Bay, Queensland. His first collection, latecomers (2005), written on the island following his mother’s death, won the New South Wales Premier’s Prize for Poetry, the Thomas Shapcott Award, was highly commended for the Dame Mary Gilmore Award and was shortlisted for a number of other major literary prizes. The selections on PIW cover all of Savige's work up to his most recent.
Surface to Air (2011), written in Rome and Cambridge, was shortlisted for The Age Poetry Book of the Year, longlisted for the ALS Gold Medal and was named in the Sydney Morning Herald’s Books of the Year for 2011. In 2014 Savige was an Australia Council writer in residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, where he wrote the chapbook Maze Bright (Vagabond Press, Rare Object Series).
Since 2013, Savige has been a Lecturer at A.C. Grayling’s New College of the Humanities in Bloomsbury, London, where he now runs the Creative Writing degree. Savige has been a recipient of a Marten Bequest Traveling Scholarship for Poetry and a Brisbane Lord Mayor’s Fellowship, and has given readings by invitation in Sydney, London, Cambridge, New York, Berlin, Prague, Verona, Bali and throughout Australia. Poetry
latecomers, University of Queensland Press, 2005.
Surface to Air, University of Queensland Press, 2011.
Maze Bright, Rare Objects Series (No. 99), Vagabond Press, Sydney, 2014.
Selected Anthologies
The Best Australian Poems 2017, ed. Sarah Holland-Batt, Black Inc., Melbourne, 2017.
Contemporary Australian Poetry, eds. Martin Langford, Judith Beveridge, David Musgrave, Judy Johnson, Puncher & Wattmann, Sydney, 2016.
The Best Australian Poems 2016, ed. Sarah Holland-Batt, Black Inc., Melbourne, 2016.
The Best Australian Poems 2014, ed. Geoff Page, Black Inc., Melbourne, 2014.
The Best Australian Poems 2013, ed. Lisa Gorton, Black Inc., Melbourne, 2013.
The Best Australian Poems 2012, ed. John Tranter, Black Inc., Melbourne, 2012.
The Best Australian Poems 2011, ed. John Tranter, Black Inc., Melbourne, 2011.
Thirty Australian Poets, ed. Felicity Plunkett, University of Queensland Press, 2011.
The Best Australian Poems 2010, ed. Robert Adamson. Black Inc., Melbourne, 2010.
The Best Australian Poems 2009, ed. Robert Adamson. Black Inc., Melbourne, 2009.
The Best Australian Poems 2008, ed. Peter Rose. Melbourne: Black Inc., Melbourne, 2008.
The Penguin Anthology of Australian Poetry, ed. John Kinsella, Penguin, Camberwell, 2008.
LINKS
The poet’s website
Author page at the Poetry Foundation
PODCAST: Savige reads MAGNIFERA and CAROUSEL
INTERVIEW with Singapore Quarterly Literary Review
READING from Surface to Air and interview at the British Museum
SAVIGE ON POETS AND POETRY
Silence and Monsters in Australian Poetry
Rimbaud in Java
Les Murray
David Malouf
Poetry Lives, OK? On Bök’s Xenotext, Ern Malley
Wilfred Owen
Virgil
At the XXIII International James Joyce Symposium
REVIEWS
Chris Brown on Maze Bright
Michelle Cahill on Surface to Air
Martin Duwell on Surface to Air
Alison Clifton on Surface to Air
Louise Waller on latecomers
Poems
Poems of Jaya Savige
Sponsors
Partners
LantarenVenster – Verhalenhuis Belvédère