Lisa Gorton (born 1972) is an Australian poet, novelist, literary editor and essayist.^[1] She is the author of three award-winning poetry collections: Press Release,^[2] Hotel Hyperion,^[3] and Empirical.^[4] Her novel The Life of Houses, received the NSW Premier's People's Choice Award for Fiction,^[5] and the Prime Minister's Award for Fiction (shared).^[6] Gorton is also the editor of Black Inc's anthology Best Australian Poems 2013.^[7]

Gorton was educated at the University of Melbourne and at Oxford University.^[8] At Oxford, as a Rhodes Scholar, Gorton completed an MPhil in Renaissance Literature and a DPhil on John Donne.^[8] She received the John Donne Society Award for Outstanding Publication in Donne Studies.^[9]

In 1994 she was awarded the inaugural Vincent Buckley Poetry Prize.^[10]

Having previously worked as poetry editor for the literary journal, Gorton was the Australian Book Review's Poet of the Month in October 2019.^[11][12] Gorton has contributed essays to the Australian Book Review^[11] and the Sydney Review of Books.^[13] As of 2021, she is poetry editor of Island.^[14]

She is the granddaughter of the former Prime Minister John Gorton.^[10]

Gorton's poetry has been widely anthologised, including in The Turnrow Anthology of Contemporary Australian Poetry,^[15] edited by John Kinsella, the Best Australian Poems series (2008,^[16] 2009,^[17] 2010,^[18] 2011,^[19] 2012,^[20] 2014,^[21] 2015^[22]), Contemporary Australian Feminist Poetry, edited by Bonny Cassidy and Jessica Wilkinson,^[23] the Anthology of Australian Prose Poetry,  edited by Cassandra Atherton and Paul Hetherington,^[24] the Poetry Magazine May 2016 selection of Australian poetry, edited by Bob Adamson with photos by Juno Gemes,^[25] and online anthologies Poetry International ^[8] and lyrikline.^[26] Her poetry can also be found online at Cordite magazine.^[27]

Gorton's essays have been published in the Sydney Review of Books ^[28] and Australian Book Review,^[29] and in the essay collection Australian Face, edited by James Ley and Catriona Menzies-Pike.^[30] Gorton wrote the introductory essay for the Text Classics reissue of Christina Stead's novel The Little Hotel.^[31] She also wrote the catalogue essay for Izabela Pluta's artwork Apparent Distance in the 2019 exhibition The National at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.^[32]

Gorton is interested in ekphrastic poetry. She has composed a series of poems for Izabela Pluta's artist's book Figures of Slippage and Oscillation.^[33] She has also written ekphrastic poems for the catalogue of the 2010 Adelaide Biennial of Contemporary Art Before and After Science,^[34] for the exhibition Conversations in Ellipsis,^[35] and for the Melbourne Now limited edition volume from the National Gallery of Victoria.^[36]

Gorton gave a poetry reading at TEDx Sydney in 2010.^[37]

Gorton's awards for poetry include the Victorian Premier's Prize for Poetry,^[29] the Vincent Buckley Poetry Prize,^[9] and the Philip Hodgins Memorial Medal.^[38] Her novel The Life of Houses was awarded the New South Wales Premier's People's Choice Award, and the Prime Minister's Fiction Prize.^[5]  

Her poetry books have also been shortlisted in the Prime Minister's Prize for Poetry,^[39] the Mary Gilmore Poetry Prize,^[40] the Melbourne Prize for Literature Best Writing Award,^[41] and the NSW Premier's Poetry Award.^[42]

• 1994 Vincent Buckley Poetry Prize^[10]
• 2008 Victorian Premier's Prize for Poetry (then the C. J. Dennis Prize for Poetry) for Press Release ^[43]
• 2013 Queensland Literary Awards Judith Wright Calanthe Award, shortlisted for Hotel Hyperion^[9]
• 2014 Western Australian Premier's Prize for Poetry, shortlisted for Hotel Hyperion ^[44]
• 2014 Philip Hodgins Memorial Medal for Excellence in Literature for Hotel Hyperion ^[45]
• 2016 Prime Minister's Literary Award for Fiction, joint winner for The Life of Houses ^[46]
• 2016 New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards People's Choice Award for The Life of Houses ^[47]
• 2020 Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry, shortlisted for Empirical ^[48]
• 2022 Wesley Michel Wright Prize for Poetry^[49]
• 2023 Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry, shortlisted for Miribilia^[50]

On Empirical

Jessica Wilkinson, poet and editor of Rabbit magazine, interviewed Gorton about her poetry collection Empirical, noting Lisa's interest in ‘how a feeling for place originates'.^[51] In The Sydney Review of Books, poet and critic Michael Farrell suggests that Gorton's poetry collection Empirical offers ‘models of 3D thought', remarking that ‘Gorton reanimates - and translates - historical textual materials into contemporary poetry', and that her work ‘performs as an antidote to nationalist ideology'.^[52] In The Sydney Morning Herald, James Antoniou writes: ‘an important voice is breaking through here: assured, polyphonic and, for all its quietness, visionary'.^[53]

On The Life of Houses

In the Sydney Review of Books, Kerryn Goldsworthy writes about Gorton's debut novel The Life of Houses:^[54] ‘One of the main reasons for Gorton's status as a highly respected, prize-winning Australian poet is her unique and personal angle of vision on the world. It's something that, as Auden surmises, cannot be taught…For Gorton it seems not so much a matter of finding le mot juste as of making something entirely new: not merely choosing the word or naming the non-verbal thing it represents, but of using metaphor to create a new and separate third entity in which a word or phrase brings an inchoate, intangible feeling, sensation or memory out of the shadows and into the sunlight of consciousness'.