Petra White
Petra White is an Australian poet. White was born in Adelaide in 1975, the eldest of six children, and now lives in Berlin with her husband and daughter. Her first published collection of poetry, The Incoming Tide (John Leonard Press 2007), was shortlisted for the Queensland Premier's Literary Awards and the ACT Poetry Prize. In 2011, five of White's poems were selected for inclusion in the landmark anthology of Australian Poetry, Australian Poetry Since 1788. The poems selected are Ricketts Point, Voyage, Woman and Dog, Older Sister and Notes for the Time Being. Biography Petra White grew up in Adelaide. She studied English and German literature at the University of Melbourne, completing a BA with honours. In 2002 she studied at Essen University and travelled widely in Europe. In 2008 she was Fellow of Hawthornden Castle International Retreat for Writers, completing a five-week residency. In 2012, White and Paul Hetherington took Australian poetry to Ireland with Australian Poetry Limited's first international tour. White conducted readings and workshops at many venues throughout the Republic and Northern Ireland including the Bealtaine Festival in Dublin, Laurel Villa in Magherafelt and Writers' Week at Listowel. White's second collection, The Simplified World, published in 2010, was the joint winner of the Grace Leven Prize for Poetry. Her work has appeared in the anthology Take Five (Shoestring Press 2008, UK), The Age, Melbourne, and other anthologies and periodicals. A third major collection, A Hunger, was published by John Leonard Press in 2014. This publication includes White's previous collections, in which slight changes have been made to a small number of poems. In May 2017, White's fourth collection, Reading for a Quiet Morning, was published by GloriaSMH Press. It features a 'compact epic' inspired by the biblical story of Ezekiel, but with a distinctly twenty-first century, feminist perspective. White was a founding co-editor of the So Long Bulletin, a blog on Australian poetry and criticism. She was the judge for the Reason-Brisbane Poetry Prize in 2011. White holds a master's degree in Public Policy and Management from the University of Melbourne. In 2018, she moved to Europe, initially to London, then to Berlin, where she completed her fifth collection, titled 'Cities', published in 2021 by Sydney-based Vagabond Press. Works Critical reception "With her unpretentious voice and subject matter, Petra draws the reader to her and absorbs them with tales of her multifaceted life." 'Sister', from The Incoming Tide, "is a lovely, almost comically surprising poem whose essential structure is that it is about sisterhood only in its title and its last two lines. As the poem progresses through four eight-line stanzas the gap between the title and the content of the poem grows more and more intense so that the conclusion is that much more satisfying:" Descendant of the Aztec dog-god Xolotl, who with mangled hands and feet guided the dead to heaven, his once trans- lucent form refuses catastrophe; more than the ailing tabby, the timorous and watchful high-heeled dog, or the rented fireprone house, he