Hilary Elfick is an accomplished broadcaster: 100 scripts for the BBC, producer, BBC Radio 4, subsequently on radio/television in New Zealand, South Africa, Kenya, Uganda and Zimbabwe, and featured on BBC Radio 2 and BBC World Service. She has been interviewed on local radio on the craft of poetry, and the gift and responsibility of imagination.

She has lectured and performed presentations in Australia, New Zealand, USA, Canada, South Africa, Uganda, Kenya and Zimbabwe; in Guildford UK on George Mackay Brown and R S Thomas, and at the City Literary Institute Drury Lane London on conflicts in literature. Hilary is a member of ASLEC-ANZ (Association for the Study of Literature, the Environment and Culture, Australia and New Zealand) and of The Australia and New Zealand Shakespeare Association.

Her solo performances have been in theatres, cathedrals, libraries, hospices, and bookshops and, recently, in the Poetry Café in Canberra.

An Ordinary Storm, a sequence based on Shakespeare's The Tempest and based in Polynesia was published, performed, recorded and filmed by The University of Otago in Dunedin. Copies of the book, CD and DVD are available from the University, or in Europe from Pennings. A new edition was published in the UK by Oversteps Press in 2010 and is available from them.

Comments on Hilary's work:

"Most versions of The Tempest simplify it; Hilary's marvellous work (An Ordinary Storm) actually adds to its complexity. I admire it enormously."

Evelyn Tribble, Prof of English,
University of Otago, Dunedin
 

"Bush Track is really very good. I have learnt things in this collection that I didn't know, and I can hear the voices as I read it. I'd like to see what she does in my part of New South Wales"

Les Murray
 

"Excellent poems, vigorous, loving, deeply moving and very accomplished... breathtaking writing...a pen dipped in gold"

Joan Poulson
 

"For Hilary Elfick, language is directly in the service of reality... is cinema vérité in this sense, and for political reasons too, as the Ugandan poems in Harpoon the Breeze testify. At the same time her phrasing is rich and wilder than mere 'worthiness' often produces. She's versatile too, and has an impressive ability to shape each poem to its situation and origin, a truly aesthetic achievement."

Jan Ramsay, Orbis
 

Publications:

Pamphlet, Water Colour: Hen Run, 2014. £4

Collection, An Ordinary Storm:

   original - University of Otago, 2007, ISBN 978-0-473-12071-9

   UK version - Oversteps Books  2010, ISBN 978-1-906856-12-0

Book reviews for BBC World Service, The Times Literary and Educational Supplements and Orbis Poetry Magazine

Folk and Vision (1971) Hart-Davis

The Horse Might Sing (1990), Unexpected Spring (1992) and Going Places (1994) Envoi Poets Press

Bush Track, Harpoon the Breeze (1999) and The Third Mile ( 2009) Guildford Poets Press

Let Time Hold Its Breath - "The Wedding Poem", (2003) Saint Publishing (New Zealand)

Attending to the Fact - Staying with Dying (Elfick and Head) (2004) Jessica Kingsley, London and New York

The Sleeping Warrior (1999) Cromwell Press (novel)

Poems in national collections, THE SHOp, Blackfriars, The Tablet, Markings, Grey Hen Press (anthologies), Third Age Press, Quadrant (Australia, lit ed Les Murray), The Herald Sun (Australia) and The Sydney Morning Herald

Five times in 1995 prizewinner in international poetry competitions.

Hilary's Christmas poem Holly Wreath is available as a poetry p f Poem Card and her small postable booklet ‘Let Time Hold Its Breath’ is suitable for weddings and available from Hilary.

She wrote the libretto for a musical about Collingwood (Australia Rules) Football Club. Her latest publication, On the Edge (with David Head), from Pennings Partnership Press (Autumn 2013), is a sequel to Attending to the Fact.

Her current work is on a children's collection, and a series of books with a prize winning Australian photographer, featuring the bush landscape of New South Wales.

e-mail Hilary

poetry favourites:
ASLEC-ANZ;
Some Stories
(listen in to
"An Ordinary Storm")
Pennings Partnership Press

shop elsewhere ...

pamphlets -
"This Is What Happens",
"The Outshift Places"
and
Water Colour",
Hen Run

collections -
"A Christening Cake for Edgar Boaz" and "An Ordinary Storm" (2010),
Oversteps Books;

"Root and Branch"
and (joint)
"On The Edge",
Pennings Partnership Press;

"An Ordinary Storm" (2007)
University of Otago, Dunedin;

"The Third Mile", "Bush Track"
and
"Harpoon the Breeze",
Guildford Poets Press;

"Going Places - Poems and Tales",
"Unexpected Spring",
"The Horse Might Sing",  
Envoi;

 "Let Time Hold Its Breath",
Saint Publishing,
NZ;

bi-lingual -
"A Single Instinct",
Integral/CLP
(Bucharest);

"Attending to the Fact - Staying with Dying",
Jessica Kingsley Publishers;

novel -
"The Sleeping Warrior",
Cromwell
Publishers

as co-ed -
THE SHop
anthology 2020

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