Fay Zwicky

Fay Zwicky (4 July 1933 – 2 July 2017) was an Australian poet, short story writer, critic and academic primarily known for her autobiographical poem Kaddish, which deals with her identity as a Jewish writer.

Life Born Julia Fay Rosefield, Zwicky grew up in suburban Melbourne. Her family was fourth generation Australian—her father, a doctor; her mother, a musician. Zwicky was an accomplished pianist by the age of six, and performed with her violinist and cellist sisters while still at school. After completing her schooling at Anglican institutions, she entered the University of Melbourne in 1950, receiving her Bachelor of Arts in 1954. Descended from European Jews, she described herself as an "outsider" ("I was ashamed of my foreign interloper status") from an "Anglo-Saxon dominated" Australian culture. She began publishing poetry as an undergraduate, thereafter working as a musician, touring Europe, America and South-East Asia between 1955 and 1965.

In 1990, Zwicky married her second husband James Mackie, who died before her. She led a reclusive life in Perth: "I never expect anything. I always think I'm drifting and nobody knows I'm here, and it's great." In 2004, Fay Zwicky was declared a Western Australian "Living Treasure", a term she called "repulsive ... like being prematurely obituarized."

Zwicky's first collection, Isaac Babel's Fiddle (1975) included a number of poems about her Lithuanian grandfather and his cultural displacement in Australia, which nevertheless saved him from the Holocaust ("Summer Pogrom", "Totem and Taboo"). Zwicky also writes of her own alienation, in spite of her being "whiter than Persil".

The title poem of her most-admired collection, Kaddish (1982), is an elegy for her father who died at sea. In her poem Zwicky uses the Aramaic phrases of the traditional prayer of mourning to frame her own memorial prayer detailing her complex relationship with her father. She draws on the Haggadah, the Passover Seder night liturgy. Kaddish "also uses the Lord’s Prayer and invokes God in female form as a goddess. Ivor Indyk describes Kaddish as "a mosaic of textual citations, of the Kaddish, the Passover Haggadah and numerous allusions to myth and nursery rhyme."

Ask Me, Zwicky's third book of poetry, contained poems on China, America, and a series of religious poems on the deities of the Hindu pantheon ("Ganesh", "Vishnu", "Siva", and the goddess "Devi"). In Zwicky's subsequent books she developed a sparser style of poetry. In the title poem of The Gatekeeper’s Wife Zwicky wrote of the devastating loss of her husband, and recalls the custom of lighting a memorial candle. In "Losing Track" the death of her husband is linked with the Jewish loss of Zion. The collection included an elegy, "Banksia Blechifolia", for Primo Levi, and "Groundswell for Ginsberg", an homage to Allen Ginsberg.

Awards and nominations 1982 – Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry for Kaddish and Other Poems 1987 – Western Australian Premier's Book Award for Non-fiction for The Lyre in the Pawnshop 1991 – Western Australian Premier's Book Award for Poetry for Ask Me 1998 – Western Australian Premier's Book Award for Poetry for The Gatekeeper's Wife 2005 – Patrick White Award 2006 – Christopher Brennan Award of the Fellowship of Australian Writers 2007 – New South Wales Premier's Literary Award for Poetry for Picnic