Peter Goldsworthy

rdf:langString Peter Goldsworthy

rdf:langString Peter David Goldsworthy AM (born 12 October 1951) is an Australian writer and medical practitioner. He has won major awards for his short stories, poetry, novels, and opera libretti. Goldsworthy began his writing life as a poet, as described in his 2013 comic memoir, His Stupid Boyhood, and regards poetic principles as the basis of all his writing. The Australian expatriate writer Clive James comments that Goldsworthy's poetry is often seen as a sideline, but argues that it is "at the centre of his achievement". James writes: His precise wit operates on every level, from the sonic (a concealed dove really does say hidden here, hidden here) to the conceptual (the human body really is packed tight like an attempt on the record of filling a Mini). The general impression is of a fastidious insistence that the particular comes first, and any general comment that follows had better be particular too.