Dr Christopher Pollnitz
Honorary Senior Lecturer
School of Humanities, Creative Ind and Social Sci (English and Writing)
Career Summary
Biography
Biography
Since retirement in 2010, Christopher Pollnitz’s focus has swung towards research in and publication on D. H. Lawrence. The first two volumes of The Poems, for the Cambridge University Press edition of D. H. Lawrence’s Works, appeared in 2013. The third and last volume of The Poems: Uncollected Poems and Early Versions was published in 2018. Volume III was also the fortieth and final volume in the Cambridge University Press edition of D. H. Lawrence’s Works.
Since publication of The Poems, Pollnitz has continued to produce chapters, articles and reviews on Lawrence – for instance, “D. H. Lawrence: Croydon Poet” in 2020 – but has focussed on Lawrence in Australia. An article on the photographs which Denis Forrester took of Frieda and Lawrence in Thirroul – drawing on the album of the Forresters’ granddaughter, Beverley MacKay, who lives in the Nelson Bay area, and on materials deposited by the Forresters’ son, Norman Forrester, in the Local History section of the Newcastle Public Library – was published in 2021. A second article, “Sidney Nolan and Arthur Boyd: Lawrence’s Afterlife among Australian Painters”, will be published late in 2022.
In the last five years, Dr Pollnitz has received two honours, from the UK and the USA. In 2017, he was elected a Vice President of the D. H. Lawrence Society. In 2020, the Harry T. Moore Award for Lifetime Achievement in Lawrence Studies was conferred on him. Because of the pandemic, the award was presented at the 15th International D. H. Lawrence Society of North America Conference, convened in Taos, New Mexico, 19-23 July 2022.
Research Expertise
Prior to his retirement, Dr Pollnitz's interests included contemporary Australian literature, particularly poetry, which he wrote about in chapters, articles and reviews. These ranged over a number of later twentieth-century Australian poets, notably Peter Porter, Les Murray, John Scott and Alan Wearne. Included among the articles, in 2004, was the first survey to be written of the Australian verse novel, an article which has attracted others to the study of what is now a well recognised genre. In 2020, Linda Weste edited a collection of interviews, Inside the Verse Novel: Writers on Writing, and in 2022 a monograph, The Verse Novel: Australia and New Zealand. In 2021, ANU’s National Centre for Australian Children’s Literature published a blog by a teacher librarian, “Momo”, on verse novels for young adults.
Published in 1982, Pollnitz’s first article on Lawrence, “‘I Didn’t Know His God’: The Epistemology of D. H. Lawrence’s ‘Fish’”, led to his being invited to a centenary conference in Bristol. In 1985, the paper he gave at the centenary conference in Bristol, “‘Raptus Virginis’: The Dark God in the Poetry of D. H. Lawrence” – it was published in 1986, in D. H. Lawrence: Centenary Essays, edited by Mara Kalnins – led to an invitation to join the international team of editors working on the Cambridge University Press edition of Lawrence’s Works. Pollnitz’s chapters and articles on Lawrence include a series, beginning in 1995, on Lawrence’s manuscript verse, the transmission of the texts of Lawrence's poems and the problems of editing his poetry for the Cambridge University Press edition of Works.
Teaching Expertise
Pollnitz taught undergraduate courses in English literature from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. His specialist periods were English Romanticism and Modernism. He coordinated and taught courses on creative writing, never believing himself to be a sufficiently accomplished poet to teach such courses appropriately. A course he taught with more conviction, Poetry in Action, was designed to encourage trainee primary and secondary teachers to overcome their fear (engendered by equally frightened secondary teachers) of poetry. The course encouraged student teachers to use poetry often in the classroom, to read it aloud and to convince school students that poetry is immense fun. In Romanticism and Poetry in Action he sang ballads like “The Cruel Mother” and “Lord Randall”, relating them to Wordworth’s “The Thorn” and Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rain”. Singing, even with an untrained voice, is a first-rate attention grabber in lectures or seminars. Reciting poems from memory comes a close second. Another course he designed and enjoyed teaching, Hardy to Lawrence, looked at the issue of Victorian and twentieth-century censorship. A course he devised but taught only twice, Poet Novelists and the Verse Novel, was taken by Judy Johnson, who has gone on to write the verse novel, Jack (2006 and 2008), and to establish herself as the finest twentieth-century poet in the Hunter region.
Georgina Woods, a former postgraduate student whose PhD on Ezra Pound was co-supervised by Pollnitz, has recently published a volume of poems, The Tide Will Take It (Puncher and Wattmann, 2021). Two other postgraduate students with whom Pollnitz had a mutually beneficial relationship were Elizabeth Easton and Ronan McGinty. Dr Easton has extracted from her thesis on Hardy’s tragic novels an article on ‘Keeping Secrets’ in Far from the Madding Crowd; the article has recently been published in the Thomas Hardy Journal. In his thesis Dr McGinty searched for contemporary, hitherto unlisted reviews of Lawrence’s poetry and added more than ten per cent to the number of previously known reviews; the reviews he discovered have now been recorded and discussed in the reception sections of The Poems. Since himself becoming an Honorary Associate of the University of Newcastle, Dr McGinty has continued to work in with Pollnitz on all his Lawrence projects.
Administrative Expertise
I have served as head of the discipline of English and convenor of the Honours English program, but my preference is for coordinating of undergraduate courses.
Qualifications
- PhD, University of Leicester - UK
- Bachelor of Arts (Honours), University of Adelaide
Keywords
- Australian poetry
- D H Lawrence
- English literature
- Twentieth-century literature
Publications
For publications that are currently unpublished or in-press, details are shown in italics.
Book (2 outputs)
Year | Citation | Altmetrics | Link |
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2013 | Pollnitz CP, Lawrence DH, The Poems, D. H. Lawrence: Volume I Poems, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 672 (2013) [A1] | Nova | |
2013 | Pollnitz CP, Lawrence DH, The Poems, D. H. Lawrence: Volume II Notes and Apparatus, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 732 (2013) [A1] |
Chapter (6 outputs)
Year | Citation | Altmetrics | Link | |||||
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2018 |
Pollnitz C, 'Verse Forms', D. H. Lawrence in Context 121-130 (2018)
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2011 | Pollnitz CP, Kavanagh PL, 'A History', Completely Surrounded: Thirty Years of the Newcastle Poetry Prize, 1981-2011, Puncher & Wattmann, Glebe, NSW 3-5 (2011) [B2] | |||||||
2009 | Pollnitz CP, 'Keeping his flag flying: Censorship and Lawrence?s poetry', Windows to the Sun: D. H. Lawrence's, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, Madison, New Jersey 165-186 (2009) [B1] | Nova | ||||||
2006 | Pollnitz CP, 'John A Scott', Australian Writers, 1975-2000, Gale Cengage, Detroit, Michigan 289-296 (2006) [B1] | Nova | ||||||
2006 | Pollnitz CP, 'Alan Wearne', Australian Writers, 1975-2000, Gale Cengage, Detroit, Michigan 322-329 (2006) [B1] | |||||||
2005 | Pollnitz CP, 'Murray, Les (1938-)', Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English, Routledge, London 1062-1064 (2005) [B2] | |||||||
Show 3 more chapters |
Journal article (24 outputs)
Year | Citation | Altmetrics | Link | ||
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2015 | Pollnitz CP, 'Using the Cambridge 'Poems' and auditing Lawrence's Sacred Dramas', D. H. Lawrence Review, 40 11-33 (2015) | ||||
2013 | Pollnitz CP, 'Christopher Pollnitz reviews Clear Brightness by Kim Cheng Boey', Mascara Literary Review, 1-3 (2013) [C3] | Nova | |||
2012 | Pollnitz CP, 'Writing the Australian bush: DH Lawrence's wildflowers', The Conversation, (2012) [C3] | ||||
2012 | Pollnitz CP, 'Bethan Jones, The last poems of D. H. Lawrence: Shaping a late style [Book Review]', Notes and Queries, 59 453-455 (2012) [C3] | ||||
2012 | Pollnitz CP, 'D. H. Lawrence and Judith Wright: Overlapping modernisms', D. H. Lawrence Studies, 20 1-35 (2012) [C1] | Nova | |||
2009 | Pollnitz CP, 'Botanists and poets: How to introduce an Asphodel', Journal of D. H. Lawrence Studies, 2 171-182 (2009) [C1] | Nova | |||
2008 | Pollnitz CP, 'Selected poems, complete with warts', Journal of D. H. Lawrence Studies, 1 149-159 (2008) [C1] | Nova | |||
2006 | Pollnitz CP, 'Travel and Transmission: Textual Instability in the Tourist Poems of Lawrence's Birds, Beasts and Flowers', Journal of D.H. Lawrence Studies, 59-89 (2006) [C1] | ||||
2005 |
Pollnitz CP, 'The Censorship and Transmission of D.H. Lawrence's Pansies: The Home Office and the 'Foul-Mouthed Fellow'', Journal of Modern Literature, 28 44-71 (2005) [C1]
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Nova | |||
2005 | Pollnitz CP, 'Homosexuality, Violence and Belonging in Kangaroo', The Journal of the D.H. Lawrence Society, 7-31 (2005) [C2] | ||||
2004 | Pollnitz CP, 'Australian Verse Novels', Heat, 7 229-252 (2004) [C1] | Nova | |||
2004 | Pollnitz CP, 'Norman Talbot: In Memoriam', SOUTHERLY, 64 115-118 (2004) [C3] | ||||
2003 | Pollnitz CP, 'Watermarks in a Cigar Box: Findings in DH Lawrence's Manuscript Verse', D. H. Lawrence Review, 31 1-19 (2003) [C1] | Nova | |||
2001 |
Cram D, Pollnitz CP, 'D. H. Lawrence as Verse Translator', The Cambridge Quarterly, 2 133-150 (2001) [C1]
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Nova | |||
2001 | Pollnitz CP, 'Folie, Topography and Family in Murray's Middle-Distance Poems', Australian Literary Studies, 20, 2 43-63 (2001) [C1] | Nova | |||
2001 | Pollnitz CP, 'Criticism, Biography and Les Murray', Heat, New Series, No. 1 229-242 (2001) [C1] | ||||
2000 | Pollnitz CP, 'A Primer for Postmoderns', Antipodes, 14 76-77 (2000) [C3] | ||||
2000 | Pollnitz CP, 'Smuggling the Heart into the New Millennium', Ulitarra, 17/18 190-198 (2000) [C3] | ||||
1999 | Pollnitz CP, '"Sniffing the Humus: Where Did Lawrence's Pansies Spring From?"', Etudes Lawrenciennes, 20 (1999) 39-58 (1999) [C3] | ||||
1999 | Pollnitz CP, 'The Monkey Puzzle Tree in ?Eden'', D. H. Lawrence Society Newsletter, No. 64 16-18 (1999) [C3] | ||||
1999 | Pollnitz CP, '?Combed into line': The Rhythm of Perception in [Robert] Gray's Verse', mETAphor, June 1999 16-22 (1999) [C3] | ||||
1998 | Pollnitz CP, '"A Suburban Sunday"', D.H.Lawrence Society Newsletter, 62 15-16 (1998) [C3] | ||||
1998 | Pollnitz CP, '"[Review of] D. H. Lawrence, Sea and Sardinia, ed. Mara Kalnins, Cambridge: Cambridge UP"', Notes and Queries, 243 508-509 (1998) [C3] | ||||
Show 21 more journal articles |
Review (1 outputs)
Year | Citation | Altmetrics | Link |
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2012 | Pollnitz CP, 'D.H. Lawrence. Last Poems', The Literary Encyclopedia (2012) [D2] |
Creative Work (22 outputs)
Year | Citation | Altmetrics | Link |
---|---|---|---|
2014 | Pollnitz CP, Eight poems (2014) | ||
2013 | Pollnitz CP, Satin bower bird; Kookaburra; White-bellied sea-eagle, Wahroonga, NSW (2013) [J2] | ||
2012 | Pollnitz CP, American Idylls: I Mt Vernon, Mascara Literary Review, Wahroonga, NSW, Australia (2012) [J2] | ||
2012 | Pollnitz CP, American Idylls: II New Jersey, Mascara Literary Review, Wahroonga, NSW, Australia (2012) [J2] | ||
2012 | Pollnitz CP, American Idylls: III The Pierpont Morgan Library and Museum, Mascara Literary Review, Wahroonga, NSW, Australia (2012) [J2] | ||
2012 | Pollnitz CP, American Idylls: IV Ground Zero, Mascara Literary Review, Wahroonga, NSW, Australia (2012) [J2] | ||
2012 | Pollnitz CP, American Idylls: V The Whitman Way, Mascara Literary Review, Wahroonga, NSW, Australia (2012) [J2] | ||
2010 | Pollnitz CP, Little Eagle and other poems, Warners Bay, NSW (2010) [J1] | ||
2010 | Pollnitz CP, American Idylls: V Takoma, Poetry at the Pub (Newcastle) Inc, Hamilton, NSW (2010) [J2] | ||
2002 | Pollnitz CP, Whistles in the wind: Melancholy songs for End-of-season, 1998, Black Inc., Best Australian Sports Writing 2002, ed. Garrie Hutchinson (2002) [J2] | Nova | |
2002 | Pollnitz CP, Round 20, 1999: Plugger redivivus, Black Inc., Best Australian Sports Writing 2002, ed. Garrie Hutchinson (2002) [J2] | Nova | |
2002 | Pollnitz CP, New Year dirge: End-of-season, 1997, Black Inc., Best Australian Sports Writing 2002, ed. Garrie Hutchinson (2002) [J2] | Nova | |
2002 | Pollnitz CP, Round 16, 1999: Good-hair days, Black Inc., Best Australian Sports Writing 2002, ed. Garrie Hu (2002) [J2] | Nova | |
2002 | Pollnitz CP, Round 21, 1999: Totemism and exogamy, Black Inc., Best Australian Sports Writing 2002, ed. Garrie Hutchinson (2002) [J2] | Nova | |
2002 | Pollnitz CP, Round 10, 2000: Sailing to Thirroul, Black Inc., Best Australian Sports Writing 2002, ed. Garrie Hutchinson (2002) [J2] | Nova | |
2002 | Pollnitz CP, Round 5, 2001: Freak goals, Black Inc., Best Australian Sports Writing 2002, ed. Garrie Hutchinson (2002) [J2] | Nova | |
2002 | Pollnitz CP, Round 14, 2001: Riesling light, Black Inc., Best Australian Sports Writing 2002, ed. Garrie Hutchinson (2002) [J2] | Nova | |
2002 | Pollnitz CP, 'Major Round 2001: I. m. Fos Williams, 1922?2001', Black Inc., Best Australian Sports Writing 2002, ed. Garrie Hutchinson (2002) [J2] | Nova | |
2001 | Pollnitz CP, 'The Factory-Worker in All Things'; 'Election Eve, Newcastle'; 'Spinifex as Blond Beast', Catchfire Press, Newcastle, N.S.W. (2001) [J2] | ||
2000 | Pollnitz CP, Kissing Berkeley goodbye, Ulitarra Literary Association, Armidale (2000) [J2] | ||
2000 | Pollnitz CP, Spinifex as Blond Beast, Lake Macquarie City Council, Speers Point (2000) [J2] | ||
2000 | Pollnitz CP, Day of the Blue Tigers, Catchfire Press, Newcastle (2000) [J2] | ||
Show 19 more creative works |
Grants and Funding
Summary
Number of grants | 9 |
---|---|
Total funding | $34,108 |
Click on a grant title below to expand the full details for that specific grant.
20071 grants / $1,700
The 11th International D.H. Lawerence Conference, East wood and the The University of Nottingham, 16/8/2007 - 21/8/2007$1,700
Funding body: University of Newcastle
Funding body | University of Newcastle |
---|---|
Project Team | Doctor Christopher Pollnitz |
Scheme | Travel Grant |
Role | Lead |
Funding Start | 2007 |
Funding Finish | 2007 |
GNo | G0187397 |
Type Of Funding | Internal |
Category | INTE |
UON | Y |
20061 grants / $1,460
2006 International D. H Lawrence Conference: The Poetics of Movement and Travel in D.H Lawrence 30 March - 1 April 2006$1,460
Funding body: University of Newcastle
Funding body | University of Newcastle |
---|---|
Project Team | Doctor Christopher Pollnitz |
Scheme | Travel Grant |
Role | Lead |
Funding Start | 2006 |
Funding Finish | 2006 |
GNo | G0186139 |
Type Of Funding | Internal |
Category | INTE |
UON | Y |
20041 grants / $2,373
10th International D. H. Lawrence Conference: 26 June - 1 July 2005$2,373
Funding body: University of Newcastle
Funding body | University of Newcastle |
---|---|
Project Team | Doctor Christopher Pollnitz |
Scheme | Travel Grant |
Role | Lead |
Funding Start | 2004 |
Funding Finish | 2004 |
GNo | G0184987 |
Type Of Funding | Internal |
Category | INTE |
UON | Y |
20021 grants / $6,500
Reception of D.H. Lawrence's poems, in the USA, for the Cambridge University Press Poems$6,500
Funding body: University of Newcastle
Funding body | University of Newcastle |
---|---|
Project Team | Doctor Christopher Pollnitz |
Scheme | Project Grant |
Role | Lead |
Funding Start | 2002 |
Funding Finish | 2002 |
GNo | G0181322 |
Type Of Funding | Internal |
Category | INTE |
UON | Y |
19981 grants / $3,500
Research for the Cambridge University Press variorum edition of D.H. Lawrence's Poems finalising the textual transmission of Pansies.$3,500
Funding body: University of Newcastle
Funding body | University of Newcastle |
---|---|
Project Team | Doctor Christopher Pollnitz |
Scheme | Project Grant |
Role | Lead |
Funding Start | 1998 |
Funding Finish | 1998 |
GNo | G0177335 |
Type Of Funding | Internal |
Category | INTE |
UON | Y |
19971 grants / $5,000
Documentary study of D H Lawrence's Fire and research for the Cambridge poems$5,000
Funding body: University of Newcastle
Funding body | University of Newcastle |
---|---|
Project Team | Doctor Christopher Pollnitz |
Scheme | Project Grant |
Role | Lead |
Funding Start | 1997 |
Funding Finish | 1997 |
GNo | G0176592 |
Type Of Funding | Internal |
Category | INTE |
UON | Y |
19951 grants / $4,700
Lawrence Project 1995: Variorum edition of the 'Poems' of DH Lawrence, for Cambridge University Press, in four volumes, focusing in 1995 on the apparatus for..$4,700
Funding body: University of Newcastle
Funding body | University of Newcastle |
---|---|
Project Team | Doctor Christopher Pollnitz |
Scheme | Project Grant |
Role | Lead |
Funding Start | 1995 |
Funding Finish | 1995 |
GNo | G0174931 |
Type Of Funding | Internal |
Category | INTE |
UON | Y |
19931 grants / $4,000
Lawrence Project 1993: Variorum Edition of Poems, for Cambridge University Press, in four volumes$4,000
Funding body: University of Newcastle
Funding body | University of Newcastle |
---|---|
Project Team | Doctor Christopher Pollnitz |
Scheme | Project Grant |
Role | Lead |
Funding Start | 1993 |
Funding Finish | 1993 |
GNo | G0172765 |
Type Of Funding | Internal |
Category | INTE |
UON | Y |
19921 grants / $4,875
Lawrence Project 1992 : Poems, Vols Ii And Iv$4,875
Funding body: University of Newcastle
Funding body | University of Newcastle |
---|---|
Project Team | Doctor Christopher Pollnitz |
Scheme | Project Grant |
Role | Lead |
Funding Start | 1992 |
Funding Finish | 1992 |
GNo | G0174200 |
Type Of Funding | Internal |
Category | INTE |
UON | Y |
Research Supervision
Number of supervisions
Past Supervision
Year | Level of Study | Research Title | Program | Supervisor Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
2015 | PhD | Getting Here | PhD (English), College of Human and Social Futures, The University of Newcastle | Co-Supervisor |
2014 | PhD | "The Convergence of the Twain": Romanticism and Naturalism in Thomas Hardy's Tragic Novels | PhD (English), College of Human and Social Futures, The University of Newcastle | Co-Supervisor |
2008 | PhD | I Was Here | PhD (English), College of Human and Social Futures, The University of Newcastle | Co-Supervisor |
2008 | PhD | Pound's Imponderabilia: Space and Community in the Poetry of Ezra Pound | PhD (English), College of Human and Social Futures, The University of Newcastle | Principal Supervisor |
2008 | PhD | D A Contemporary Australian Dystopia: Novel and Critical Exegesis | PhD (English), College of Human and Social Futures, The University of Newcastle | Principal Supervisor |
2005 | PhD | D.H. Lawrence's Poetry. The Contemporary Reception | PhD (English), College of Human and Social Futures, The University of Newcastle | Principal Supervisor |
2005 | Masters | Charting Kate | M Creative Arts (English) [R], College of Human and Social Futures, The University of Newcastle | Co-Supervisor |
2004 | Masters | Are You Reading Me? Character and Identity in the First-Person Voice | M Creative Arts (English) [R], College of Human and Social Futures, The University of Newcastle | Sole Supervisor |
2003 | PhD | King Lear's Clothes: Addressing the Line in Twentieth Century Poetry | PhD (English), College of Human and Social Futures, The University of Newcastle | Co-Supervisor |
2003 | Masters | Fresh Fields: Dysart's Dilemma | M Creative Arts (English) [R], College of Human and Social Futures, The University of Newcastle | Co-Supervisor |
2003 | Masters | Fantastic Street | M Creative Arts (English) [R], College of Human and Social Futures, The University of Newcastle | Principal Supervisor |
Dr Christopher Pollnitz
Position
Honorary Senior Lecturer
School of Humanities, Creative Ind and Social Sci
College of Human and Social Futures
Focus area
English and Writing
Contact Details
christopher.pollnitz@newcastle.edu.au | |
Fax | (02) 4921 6933 |
Office
Building | McMullin |
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Location | Callaghan University Drive Callaghan, NSW 2308 Australia |