2021 Bruce Dawe National Poetry Prize Paul Hetherington (born 6 March 1958) is an Australian poet and Emeritus Professor at The University of Canberra, Australia.
Hetherington worked as a sessional tutor while undertaking postgraduate studies[3] and then accepted the job of Publications and Events Coordinator at Fremantle Arts Centre in 1989.
[3] After leaving the National Library of Australia following the Donald Friend Diary controversy he lectured at Faculty of Arts and Design at the University of Canberra in 2010 and continued there until 2023.
He devised the International Poetry Studies Institute (IPSI)[5] He served on numerous boards in Canberra, ACT and helped to found the now defunct 'ACT Writers Centre'.
He decided to write poetry at the age of 11[7] and has commented that 'One of the ways I recognise the poetic is when I find works in which language is condensed, ramifying, polysemous and unparaphraseable.
[25] Shirley Walker writes of Shadow Swimmer (1995) that 'This is poetry of glowing sensuality, of urgent narrative pace, of tact in its exploration of intimate experience.
'[26] Glenda Guest remarks of the verse novel, Blood and Old Belief (2003) that 'Hetherington's writing is immaculate; he finds the hidden nuances at the core of each person',[27] while Paul Kane characterises Hetherington's style in It Feels Like Disbelief (2007) as 'similarly lucid in voice, diction and image.
Hetherington's poems are tender, sometimes playful, sometimes self-deprecating, and in the case of 'Painting 22: Portrait of a Count', which appears in tribute to the poet's father, achingly poignant'.
[32][33][34] Volume four of the published diaries covers Friend’s time in Bali and contains explicit accounts of sexual relations with children, several of whom are named.
[37]In 2010 Hetherington was for a time the consultant Managing Editor to establish the National Library of Australia's project to publish in association with Australian Capital Equity, Pierre Bernard Milius: Last commander of the Baudin expedition: the journal 1800–1804.