Dorothy Porter (1954–2008) grew up in Sydney and the Blue Mountains, and graduated from the University of Sydney in 1975, the year her first book of poetry Little Hoodlum was published. In 1992, having produced another three volumes of poetry, she published Akhenaten, the first of the inventive verse novels for which she was particularly renowned. The following year, she moved to Melbourne to live with her life partner, the novelist Andrea Goldsmith. A rarity as a poet who succeeded in making a living from poetry, Porter's second verse novel, the detective thriller The Monkey's Mask (1994), was named the Age Book of the Year for Poetry and the Braille Book of the Year, won the National Book Council Award for Poetry, was adapted for stage and radio, and made into a feature film. What a Piece of Work (1999), set in a Sydney psychiatric hospital in the 1960s, was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award; her fourth verse novel Wild Surmise (2002) was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin in 2003 – in which year Goldsmith was also shortlisted for the award. Porter's last verse novel El Dorado (2007) was nominated for a Prime Minister's Literary Award and a Ned Kelly Award for crime writing. In addition, she wrote two libretti, two works of young adult fiction and published two volumes of her collected poems. At the time of her death from complications arising from breast cancer, she was collaborating with musician Tim Finn on a rock opera. The Bee Hut and Love Poems (the latter selected by Goldsmith) were published posthumously, as was her essay On Passion.
Melbourne-based painter, printmaker and sculptor Rick Amor first saw Porter on television and made a drawing of her as he sat and watched her talk. He became even more interested in her work when he read The Monkey's Mask, and at a book-signing soon afterwards he asked her if she would like to sit for a portrait. Porter and Goldsmith initially thought that Amor's painting – which, in its directness and intimate scale, creates a quietly intense focus on the sitter's face – made Porter look older than she was, but Goldsmith subsequently came to think of it as a work that showed her partner as she might have looked had she not passed away.
Gift of Andrea Goldsmith 2011. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.
© Rick Amor/Copyright Agency, 2022
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