Max Harris (poet)

Harris was born in Adelaide, South Australia, and raised in the city of Mount Gambier, where his father was based as a travelling salesman.

Harris's passion for poetry and modernism were driving forces behind the creation in 1940 of a literary journal called Angry Penguins.

Other artists associated with Angry Penguins include Albert Tucker, Joy Hester, James Gleeson, Arthur Boyd and John Perceval.

Under the name of "Ern Malley", the pair crafted a series of poems in the modernist style and submitted them to Harris at Angry Penguins.

However, police in South Australia interpreted some lines in the poetry as lewd (one poem used the word "incestuous")[2] and Harris was charged with obscenity.

After Mary Martin moved to India, Harris expanded the book chain across Australia and Hong Kong.

Although he was not a Catholic, Harris championed the then little-known nun and teacher, Mary MacKillop, founder of the Josephite order, calling her "a saint for all Australians".

[5] A documentary film about Harris's relationship with his wife and about Adelaide's cultural life in the 1940s, Von Loves Her Modernist, was released by Rob George in 2022.

[9] O those dawn-waders, cold-sea-gazers, The long-shanked ibises that on the Nile Told one hushed peasant of rebirth Move in a calm immortal frieze On the mausoleum of my incestuous And self-fructifying death.