Kris Alan Hemensley (born 26 April 1946) is a poet, who was born on The Isle of Wight, and spent his early childhood in Alexandria, the son of an Egyptian mother and an English father who was stationed in Egypt with the Royal Air Force. He visited Australia at the age of 18, and emigrated there in 1966. He was awarded the Christopher Brennan Award in 2005, which recognizes poetry of "sustained quality and distinction".
Hemensley has published around 20 collections of poetry, most of which are currently out of print. Through the late 60's and 70's he was involved in poetry workshops at La Mama, and edited the cheaply produced literary magazines Our Glass, and The Ear in a Wheatfield, amongst others. The Ear played an important role in providing a place where poets — such as Jennifer Maiden[1] —who were writing outside what was then the mainstream could publish their work. In 1969 and 1970 he presented the program Kris Hemensley's Melbourne on ABC Radio. In the 1970s he was poetry editor for Meanjin
He currently manages Collected Works, a specialist poetry bookshop in Melbourne, Australia.
Poetry Collections
[with Ken Taylor] Two Poets ([s.l.: s.n., [1968]).
The Going and Other Poems (Heidelberg West, Vic: Michael Dugan, 1969).
Dreams (London: Edible Magazine, 1971).
The Soft Poems: For Timothy (Bexleyheath, UK: Prison Clothes/Joe DiMaggio Press, 1972).
Rocky Mountains and Tired Indians (Bexleyheath, UK: Joe DiMaggio Press, 1973).
Love’s Voyages (St Lucia, Qld: Makar Press, 1974).
Domestications: A Selection of Poems 1968–1972 (Melbourne: Sun Books, 1974).
Sulking in the Seventies (Clifton Hill, Vic: Ragman Productions, 1975).
The Poem of the Clear Eye (Carlton, Vic: Paper Castle, 1975).
Beginning Again: Poems 1976 (Sydney: Sea Cruise Books, 1978).
The Moths (Carlton, Vic: Paper Castle, 1978).
The Miro Poems (Alverstoke, UK: Stingy Artist, 1979).
A Mile From Poetry (Sydney: Island Press, 1979).
Trace (Port Melbourne, Vic: Ingles St Press, 1984).
Sit(e) ([Weymouth], UK: Stingy Artist/Last Straw, 1987).
Suggested Further Reading
Martin Duwell, ‘Kris Hemensley,’ in A Possible Contemporary Poetry: Interviews with Thirteen Poets from the New Australian Poetry (St Lucia, Qld: Makar Press, 1982), pp. 50–66.
Carl Harrison-Ford, ‘Poetics before Politics: A Note on Kris Hemensley’s “New Australian Poetry”,’ Meanjin Quarterly 29.2 (1970), pp. 226–31.
Kris Hemensley, ‘First Look at “The New Australian Poetry”,’ Meanjin Quarterly 29.1 (1970), pp. 118–21.
Kris Hemensley, Introduction, The Best of the Ear: The Ear in a Wheatfield, 1973–1976: A Portrait of a Magazine (Clifton Hill, Vic: Rigmorale Books, 1985).
Kris Hemensley, ‘ “…The Wild Assertion of Vitality” ’ Australian Literary Studies 8.2 (1977), pp. 226–39.
Marcus O’Donnell, ‘Kris Hemensley: Reflections on Three Generations,’ The Small Press Times (1992), p. 1.
Ken Taylor, ‘Kris Hemensley’s Melbourne,’ Melbourne On My Mind (Melbourne: ABC, 1976), pp. 49–63.
Jim Tulip, ‘Towards an Australian Modernism: New Writings of Kris Hemensley,’ Southerly 37.2 (1977), pp. 142–51.
(List of works from the Australian Poetry Library)