Gargoyle Poets Series


The Gargoyle Poets Series were a series of Australian poetry chapbooks published by Makar Press from 1972-1980 and edited by Martin Duwell. Makar magazine produced four issues a year and from 1972 onward one issue was replaced with three small books from the Gargoyle Poets Series. The series consisted of thirty-seven books of poetry between twenty and thirty-six pages in length.
"Makar was established in 1960 as a student run magazine of the English Society of the University of Queensland. Taking its title from the middle-Scots word for maker, it published poetry, fiction, drama and criticism. Graham Rowlands was appointed editor soon after the magazine changed to a smaller format in 1966. Then, in 1968, Martin Duwell was appointed editor, beginning his long association with the magazine. By the early 1970s the poetry published in Makar had evolved, according to Robert Habost in his 1982 assessment for Image, 'from the "gushy", "high flying", imagistic, traditional rhyming verse' of the early 1960s 'to... stark, concise, condensed verse'.
Makar also conducted a significant series of interviews with contemporary writers, some of which were published in A Possible Contemporary Poetry. In his introduction to this volume, Duwell imagined the Makar audience as 'reasonably intelligent, willing, but puzzled' about the 'profound and acrimonious disagreement about the nature and role of poetry and language'. It was to such debates that Makar addressed itself. The last issue of Makar appeared in September 1980."
Archives for Makar Press, including manuscripts and letters relating to the Gargoyle Poets Series, are available at the , University of Queensland.

Publications and Reviews

Stares and Statues 1972

Alan Wearne Public Relations 1972

Richard Packer The Powerhouse 1972

Peter Annand The Long-Distance Poet’s Entry into Heaven 1973

Antigone Kefala The Alien 1973

Rae Desmond Jones Orpheus with a Tuba 1973

Kris Hemensley Love’s Voyages 1974

A Waltz on Stones 1974

Stephanie Bennett Madam Blackboots 1974

Eric Beach St Kilda meets Hugo Ball 1974

Living Alone without a Dictionary 1974

John Tranter The Blast Area 1974

Chockablock with Dawn 1975

Faces of a Sitting Man 1975

Jennifer Maiden The Occupying Forces 1975

John A. Scott The Barbarous Sideshow 1975

Jennifer Rankin Ritual Shift 1976

Graham Rowlands Poems Political c.1976

Parabolas: Prose Poems 1976

Hongkong Suicide : and Other Poems 1976

The Green Wheelbarrow 1976

These Ducks: and Other Poems 1977

Blindspot 1977

Rudi Krausmann The Water Lily : and Other Poems 1977

Philip Hammial Hear Me Eating 1977

John Edwards Salt 1977

At Last No Reply 1977

Life Death and some Words About Them 1978

On Sparse Brush 1978

The Gods Ash their Cigarettes 1978

Cup Full of River 1978

Geoff Page Collecting the Weather 1978

South 1978

Bloodstock Bleeding 1979

Peter Anderson Pretending to be Salvador Dali 1979

The Art of Lying 1979

From the Edge of the World 1979