Falling into Language

by Chris Wallace-Crabbe

Falling into Language is an absorbing and elegantly-written collection of essays on language, poetry, autobiography, memory, and dreams. In this pioneering work, Wallace-Crabbe explores the many ways in which the self--however provisional or fragmented--manifests itself in language. This is a
book about beginnings and endings; it reveals the person in the poem and the critic on the move.

232 pages, Paperback

First published January 16, 1992

About the author

Chris Keith Wallace-Crabbe is an Australian poet and Emeritus Professor in The Australian Centre, University of Melbourne. He was born in the Melbourne suburb of Richmond and educated at Scotch College, Yale University, and the University of Melbourne, where for much of his life he has worked, and is now Professor Emeritus in the Australian Centre. He was Visiting Professor of Australian Studies at Harvard University and at the University of Venice, Ca'Foscari. He is also an essayist, a critic of the visual arts, and a notable public reader of his verse. After leaving school, Wallace-Crabbe... set out to be a metallurgist, but was drawn back to his childhood interest in books and art. After training in the RAAF, he worked as an electrical trade journalist while studying for his B.A. in the evenings. He published his first book of poetry while doing his Final Honors year. In 1961 he became Lockie Fellow in Australian Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Melbourne. Over the next decades he became Reader in English, and then held a Personal Chair from 1988. Thanks to the initiative of H.C.
In 2015 Wallace-Crabbe was awarded the prestigious Melbourne Prize for Literature.