First Things First: the letters of Kate Llewellyn

Books & Poetry

Wednesday May 27, 2015 Comments

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Writer Kate Llewellyn and the cover of the book of her letters.

Kate Llewellyn is one of Australia’s most celebrated and influential poets and authors, and First Things First is the first-ever volume of her letters.

The correspondence details the life and ardour of the writer, who was a guest at the recent Adelaide Writers’ Week discussing her latest book, A Fig at the Gate. It also represents a significant archive of the development of Llewellyn’s verse, as well as the changing nature of art, writing, ageing, domesticity, gardening and much more.

By turns vociferous, weary, playful, humorous and generous, the selected letters from Llewellyn’s private correspondence between 1977 and 2004 unfold like an epistolary memoir, packed with plush detail and the striking insight of a master wordsmith at the peak of her powers.

Editors Ruth Bacchus and Barbara Hill (both lecturers at Charles Sturt University in New South Wales) have done readers a great service with this book, from which Llewellyn appears as a persuasive and dramatic presence, a woman at once unexpectedly up-to-the-minute and yet emotively conservative, conventional, habitual and traditional.

The accent is one some will recognise from the author’s semi-autobiographical books such as The Waterlily: A Blue Mountains Journal, A Fig at the Gate, and Playing with Water. That voice is poised, lively, thorough, warm, speculative and reflective, but also funny and sardonic.

A pleasure to peruse, First Things First reveals the intimate knowledge, hopes, dreams and desires of one of Australia’s most admired writers.

First Things First, by Ruth Bacchus & Barbara Hill, published by Wakefield Press, $29.95.

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<h1>First Things First: the letters of Kate Llewellyn</h1>

<address><a href="https://inreview.com.au/contributors/stephen-davenport/" class="author">Stephen Davenport</a></address>
											
							Kate Llewellyn is one of Australia’s most celebrated and influential poets and authors, and First Things First is the first-ever volume of her letters.
The correspondence details the life and ardour of the writer, who was a guest at the recent Adelaide Writers’ Week discussing her latest book, A Fig at the Gate. It also represents a significant archive of the development of Llewellyn’s verse, as well as the changing nature of art, writing, ageing, domesticity, gardening and much more.
By turns vociferous, weary, playful, humorous and generous, the selected letters from Llewellyn’s private correspondence between 1977 and 2004 unfold like an epistolary memoir, packed with plush detail and the striking insight of a master wordsmith at the peak of her powers.
Editors Ruth Bacchus and Barbara Hill (both lecturers at Charles Sturt University in New South Wales) have done readers a great service with this book, from which Llewellyn appears as a persuasive and dramatic presence, a woman at once unexpectedly up-to-the-minute and yet emotively conservative, conventional, habitual and traditional.
The accent is one some will recognise from the author’s semi-autobiographical books such as The Waterlily: A Blue Mountains Journal, A Fig at the Gate, and Playing with Water.  That voice is poised, lively, thorough, warm, speculative and reflective, but also funny and sardonic.
A pleasure to peruse, First Things First reveals the intimate knowledge, hopes, dreams and desires of one of Australia’s most admired writers.
First Things First, by Ruth Bacchus & Barbara Hill, published by Wakefield Press, $29.95.
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