| About Glen |
| Glen Phillips, Author and University Teacher |
| Glen Phillips is a Western Australian who was born in 1936 in the remote Goldfields centre of Southern Cross. During his early childhood he lived in a succession of small towns in Western Australia where his father was the local school headmaster. His secondary education began in 1949 when, after winning a government scholarship, he attended the Perth Boys High School, then the equal oldest such school in Australia (founded, as was Fort Street High School, in 1847). His earliest stories, poems and plays had been written in the elementary school. However, he had his first experience of publication at Perth Boys High School where his poetry was selected for The Torch, the school magazine. It was also while at this school that he gained recognition as a child artist, having his work highly commended in the state-wide Claude-Hotchin competition for young artists. Works were also selected for a permanent collection of child art at the local Claremont Teachers’ College. In 1951, he was accepted as a student at the historic Perth Modern School and he obtained a matriculation to the University of Western Australia form this school in 1952. He was also awarded a Commonwealth Scholarship to further his studies in English Literature and Education at this University. As well, he won a Teacher Training Bursary from the Education Department of Western Australia. In 1957, Glen Phillips graduated from the University with a Bachelor of Education degree with first class honours. The subject for his honours thesis was ‘The Educational Influence of William Wordsworth’. In that year he also received the Bertha Houghton prize for the best final-year student in Education. Meanwhile, he had also enrolled as a student teacher at the Claremont Teachers’ College from which he received the Teachers’ Certificate. His poetry was published in Chiron, the College annual magazine. In later years, he received a Masters Degree in Education from the University of Western Australia (thesis topic: ‘Samuel Butler and the English Public School’) and also completed the Master of Arts Preliminary, specializing in Australian Literature (Dissertation subject: ‘Frederic Manning’s Her Privates We’). After graduation, he was appointed to the Hollywood High School to teach English and Geography and subsequently served for three years at a country senior high school. In 1962, he gained the post of Lecturer in English at the Graylands Teachers’ College where he published an annual magazine of student writing and helped students to stage many poetry readings. In 1969, he was appointed Head of the Department of English, Speech and Drama at the new Mount Lawley College of Advanced Education where he subsequently became an Assistant Director. In 1982, he was appointed a foundation Associate Dean of the Western Australian College of Advance Education. His duties included responsibility for College publications. In 1984 he was appointed as Senior Teaching Fellow in English Studies within the School of Community and Language Studies at the Nedlands Campus of the College. In 1986 he was appointed Principal Lecturer in English Studies at the Mount Lawley Campus of the College where he introduced the study of Public Relations. By 1992 the institution had changed its name to the Edith Cowan University and he became Associate Professor in English and later Chairperson of the English Department. From time to time he was also Acting Head of the School of Literature, Languages and Media Studies. It was in this period that he was instrumental in establishing the BA degree in Writing and post-graduate writing degrees. During all these years, Glen Phillips had achieved wider publication of his own poetry and became involved in the leadership of the Fellowship of Australian Writers, the WA Writers Forum, P.E.N International (Perth Branch), the English Teachers Association, the Katharine Susannah Prichard Foundation, the Children’s Book Council and many other professional writing organisations. Apart form his academic theses on Wordsworth, Samuel Butler and Frederic Manning he has had many articles published in professional journals and was co-author of several text books. He edited newsletters for academic and professional associations and co-authored two editions of an anthology of contemporary poetry, Seedtime, published by Angus and Robertson. Other literary activities included book reviewing, radio talks and poetry readings on national and community radio stations. In the 1970s Glen Phillips became a regular performer at annual poetry readings of the Fellowship of Writers and during some Festivals of Perth. He has also been invited to read poetry for many literary and cultural bodies, such as the Dante Alighieri Society, Australian-Italian Association, the Fellowship of Australian Composers and the Società Italiana di Studi Australiani, and has performed in poetry readings at the University of Western Australia; at the universities of Pisa, Florence Bologna, Turin and Urbino in Italy; in Switzerland at the University of Berne; in China at Universities in Beijing, Guangzhou, and Teinjin; in Adelaide at Writers Week and the Friendly Street Group; and at the Western Australian Art Gallery, the Fremantle Arts Centre, the Western Australian School of Mines (Kalgoorlie) and numbers of other tertiary colleges, universities, schools, libraries and theatres. He was also co-founder of the successful Poetry in Motion performance group and toured with them in W.A, Singapore, Thailand and China. In 1990 he taught on exchange for six months in China at the Guandong University for Foreign Studies and in 1991 spent a further six months in Italy, researching in Tuscany for a university project on artistic responses to landscape. He has conducted many workshops for writers and presented papers to conferences and seminars, frequently on the subject of Western Australian writers. He was the founder of the Young Writers’ Fellowship in Western Australia and has been either the sole judge or a member of the judging panels of numerous State and National literary competitions. He is a co-founder of the Katharine Susannah Prichard and the Peter Cowan Writers Centres at Greenmount and Joondalup, respectively. Glen Phillips has had work published in book form since 1969 (Essay and Thesis Preparation: Techniques and Format with L.J. Hunt, Landfall Press) and his most recent work is Spring Burning: New and Selected Poems (Folio Press, 1999). His first collection of poems was published in 1972 (Intersections, Mt Lawley CAE) and subsequent collections include: Umbria Green, Australia Gold (1987, with Walter Cerquetti, Sigla Tre Press). Poetry in Motion: A Collection of Performance Poetry (1987, with Bryn Griffiths and others, P.I.M. Press) Sacrificing the Leaves (1988, World Poetry Congress, Bangkok). Lovesongs, Lovescenes (1991, Platypus Press). In the area of editing he jointly produced Seed-Time: A Collection of Recent Poetry (1971 with H. Thompson and C. Kenworthy, Angus and Robertson) and Celebrations, Western Australian Writing 1938-1988 (1989, with Don Grant and Brian Dibble, University of WA Press). Additionally he has had numerous reviews, poetry and prose published in Western Australian, national and international journals, newspapers and anthologies and has written prefaces to a wide range of books. He was co-author and co-presenter of the 12 episode Landscape and You educational television series screened on SBS, ABC and Channel 31. His many interviews with writers have been shown on the Golden West TV network in rural W.A. He has also presented ABC radio programs and appeared on television and radio programs in Australia and overseas. |
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