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Poets post-1900
Photo of Martin Johnston by Wayne Davies(?)
Martin Johnston (1947–1990) was born in Sydney, the son of writers George Johnston and Charmian Clift. He had a European upbringing, spending fourteen years of his childhood abroad, first in England and then in Greece. In the early 1960s his parents returned to Australia, and in the late 1960s and 1970s Martin was connected with a group of young poets and editors in Sydney including Laurie Duggan, Carl Harrison-Ford and Robert Adamson who were busy overhauling New Poetry magazine. He wrote an experimental novel Cicada Gambit and published several books of poetry, married, and travelled widely in Europe. In 1993 the University of Queensland Press published the posthumous Martin Johnston — Selected Poems and Prose, edited by John Tranter.
Material available on this site:
John Tranter: Martin Johnston, 1947–1990; published as the Introduction to Martin Johnston — Selected Poems and Prose, edited by John Tranter, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1993. This piece is about twenty printed pages long.
‘The Poetry Explosion’ — Virginia Osborne introduces six talented young Sydney poets, Vogue Australia, April 1971 (Robert Adamson, John Tranter, Michael Dransfield, Martin Johnston, Terry Larsen, and Peter Skrzynecki.)
Further poems and reviews and other texts by and about this author, or that mention this author’s name, can be found in Jacket magazine on the Internet: follow this link and type the author’s name into the Jacket Search engine.
http://april.edu.au/johnston-martin/index.shtml