Head-Waters

Head-Waters

Author	Peter Skrzynecki
Language	English
Genre	Poetry collection
Publisher	Lyre Bird Writers
Publication date	1972
Publication place	Australia
Media type	Print
Pages	61 pp.
Awards	1972 Grace Leven Prize for Poetry

Head-Waters is a collection of poems by Australian poet Peter Skrzynecki, published by Lyre Bird Writers in 1972.

The collection contains 45 poems from a variety of sources.

The collection won the Grace Leven Prize for Poetry in 1972.

Contents

• "Weeping Rock"
• "Wollomombi Falls"
• "Moonbi Hills"
• "The Grandmother"
• "Jeogla"
• "The Kookaburra"
• "The Burning Tractor"
• "Wyatts Creek"
• "Wallamumbi"
• "Styx River"
• "Small School at Kunghur"
• "Lorikeets (for Noel and Norma Howard)"
• "Mount Warning"
• "Flying Foxes"
• "Bushfires at Kunghur"
• "Winter: Tweed River Valley"
• "A Last Mile at Uki"
• "Bell-bird"
• "The Finches"
• "Snake Country"
• "Sundowner"
• "The Cicada Nymph"
• "Colo River"
• "Time Without Season "
• "A Death in Paddington"
• "Genesis"
• "Theorem"
• "Sylvia Plath"
• "Migrant Bachelor"
• "Between One Poem and the Next"
• "Calvary Hospital"
• "Randolph Stow"
• "Somewhere, Between the First Breath and the Last"
• "Ephpheta"
• "X-Ray (for Dr. Frank Croll)"
• "The Woman I Never Knew: For Elizabeth Gill"
• "Sixth of April"
• "Sometimes, in a Dream or Thought"
• "Pietà"
• "Scarborough Cemetery"
• "Sandy Blight"
• "First of March"
• "Long Before the Word is Spoken"
• "Words Beyond a Speech of Music"

Critical reception

Writing in Hemisphere magazine reviewer R. F. Brissenden noted that with this collection the poet had found his "individual voice" and that the collection offered " a compelling sense of participating in another man's experience of the world."

In The Age R. A. Simpson remarked that there is "a high degree of original writing" in this collection.

See also

• 1972 in Australian literature