Ann Elder

(1918-76), born Auckland, NZ, lived in Australia from the age of 3. As Anne Mackintosh she was a noted ballet-dancer with the Borovansky Ballet Company. She published her first book of poetry, For the Record, in 1972; a second volume, Crazy Woman and Other Poems, highly commended in the National Book Council awards for 1977, was published posthumously in 1976. For the Record contains some fine individual poems, especially those with deep personal associations for the poet, e.g. 'Midnight', which concerns her mother, and 'Journey to the North', with its immense joy in homecoming after an absence; and the sequence 'Four Elegies for the Death of Women'. A new selection of her work, Small Clay Birds, including some previously unpublished poems, was edited by Lynette Wilson in 1988. The Anne Elder Trust Fund Award for poetry is administered by the Victorian branch of FAW and is awarded annually to the best first book of poetry published. First awarded in 1977, it was won by Laurie Duggan for East and Graeme Curtis for At Last No Reply. The 1978 award went to Lee Cataldi for Invitation to a Marxist Lesbian Party; 1979 to Les Harrop for The Hum of the Old Suit; 1980 to Richard Lunn for Pompeii Deep Fry; 1981 to Jenny Boult for The Hotel Anonymous and Gig Ryan for The Division of Anger; 1982 to Kate Llewellyn for Trader Kate and the Elephants and Peter Goldsworthy for Reading from Ecclesiastes; 1983 to David Brooks for The Cold Front; 1984 to Doris Brett for The Truth about Unicorns; 1985 to Stephen Williams for A Crowd of Voices; 1986 to Jan Owen for Boy with a Telescope; 1987 to Sarah Day for A Hunger to be Less Serious; 1988 to Alex Skovron for The Rearrangement; 1989 to Mark Miller for Conversing with Stones; 1990 to Jean Kent for Verandahs.

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