Suite for Percy Grainger: a biography is an experimental poetic work on the life and times of one of Australia’s most innovative and diversely accomplished musicians and composers, Percy Grainger. Alongside his immense musical output—including original compositions and folk-song arrangements—Grainger was also a keen essayist, a voracious reader, a dedicated letter writer, and an eager archivist, establishing the Grainger Museum as a repository for over 100,000 items including correspondence, clothing, musical manuscripts, instruments and everyday objects (not to forget his infamous whip collection). Of interest to me, as a poet with one eye wandering into historical archives, is how I might write a biography sympathetic to Grainger’s personality, lifestyle and philosophies.
Suite for Percy Grainger will be published by Vagabond Press in 2014.
Jessica L. Wilkinson 