Five digital sound recordings of David Malouf reading a selection of his poems. These recordings were made following the 2024 Fryer Lecture in Australian Literature, delivered by Nick Jose in honour of David Malouf AO’s 90th year. The event, held at Customs House, included a conversation between Nick Jose and David Malouf on the enduring significance of poetry in Malouf’s body of work. The readings were recorded on an iPhone by Tanya Ziebell during a visit to Mr Malouf’s residence on 13 November 2024, attended by Tanya Ziebell and Simon Farley. This recording session served as a follow-up to the lecture, titled A Tribute to David Malouf AO.

In the recordings David gives an introduction to each poem:

1. Eternal moment at Poggio Madonna.
2. Towards midnight : The Cup.
3. The Prospect of Little Anon on an Inner-city Greensward.
4. Incident on Myrtle Street.
5. Seven last words of the emperor Hadrian.

Digital sound recording of David Malouf reading the poem "The Prospect of Little Anon on an Inner-city Greensward" from the book An Open Book, published by UQP in 2018.

Digital sound recording of David Malouf reading the poem "Incident on Myrtle Street" from the book An Open Book, published by UQP in 2018.

Digital sound recording of David Malouf reading the poem "Seven last words of the emperor Hadrian" from the book Typewriter Music, published by UQP in 2007.

Digital sound recording of David Malouf reading the poem "Towards midnight : The Cup" from the book Earth Hour, published by UQP in 2014.

Digital sound recording of David Malouf reading the poem "Eternal moment at Poggio Madonna" from the book Earth Hour, published by UQP in 2014.

Correspondence; personal papers; poetry manuscripts; teaching notes and related papers on aesthetics, literature and opera; opera reviews; and newspaper cuttings on opera and literature.

Manuscript book of seventeen illuminated and illustrated poems by Australian authors. Father Leo Hayes commissioned the book of his favourite Australian poems from artist Ella Lilian Pedersen. Hayes wanted it done in the manner of the illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages. Each of the 17 poems chosen by Father Hayes has been written in calligraphy with accompanying illustrations depicting the location or subject of each poem. Pedersen crafted a tooled leather binding with ornamentation in pewter studded with semi-precious stones, including opals and agates, collected by Father Hayes when he was parish priest in Crows Nest. The original cover was damaged, and the central panel was replaced in the early 2000s by book restorer Anne Clonnan with one remaining gemstone.

Poems: The first comers there / Margaret Curran. -- Carnarvon deep gorges / Bertha Butler. -- Love in a cottage / Daniel Henry Deniehy. -- The frog pool / James Devaney. -- Toowoomba dark purple / George Essex Evans. -- Where the pelican builds / Mary Hannay Foott. -- The Waradgery tribe / Mary Gilmore. -- Taralga / Mary Gilmore. -- When winter comes to Queensland / Alice Gore-Jones. -- My country / Dorothea Mackellar. -- Colour / Dorothea Mackellar. -- The gentle water bird (for Mary Gilmore) / John Shaw Neilson. -- Old salt / Lydia M. D. O'Neil. -- The way of it / D. L. Waraker. -- In September Queensland Bush / D. L. Waraker. -- Rain magic / Frances Dunn. -- Waratah and wattle / Henry Lawson.

This collection of David Malouf contains corrected manuscript and typescript drafts of Bicycle and Other Poems, Johnno, An Imaginary Life, Child's Play, Eustace, The Prowler, Fly Away Peter, Harland's Half Acre, Antipodes : Stories, 12 Edmonstone Street, The Great World, Remembering Babylon, The Conversations at Curlow Creek, Every Move You Make, and Ransom.

There are draft typescripts and related documents for Opera Libretti by David Malouf (both published and unpublished): Voss : Opera in Two Acts After the Novel by Patrick White, Invocation to Earth, Remembering Babylon, 'The Aspern Papers', 'You can't think of everything', 'A Winter's Tale', The Fox and the Magpie. In addition there are two versions of 10,000 Miles Away, written by David Malouf for theatre.

This collection has over 1700 letters written to David Malouf from an extensive number of correspondents: Glenda Adams, Luciana Arrighi, Murray Bail, Bruce Beaver, John Bell, Bruce Beresford, Michael Berkeley, John Blight, Michael Brennan, David Brooks, Bille Brown, Felicity Bryan, Carmen Callil, Ian Callinan, Felix Calvino, Nancy Cato, Clem Christesen [writing to Judith Green, later Rodriguez], John Clanchy, Alison Clark, Dymphna Clark, Manning Clark, John Coetzee, Adele Cohen, Matthew Condon, Jim Davidson, Robyn Davidson, Bruce Dawe, Robert Dessaix, Rosemary Dobson, Espie Dods, Eve Duncan, Don Dunstan, Geoffrey Dutton, Nin Dutton, Christopher Edwards, Nick Enright, Michele Field, Helen Garner, Marea Gazzard, Clem Gorman, Lisa Gorton, Kate Grenville, Elizabeth Harrower, Kenneth J Harvey, Dennis Haskell, Ihab Hassan, Shirley Hazzard (Shirley and Francis Steegmuller), Janette Turner Hospital, Brian Howard, Barry Humphries, Ivor Indyk, Elizabeth Jolley, Gail Jones, Nicholas Jose (Nick Jose), Beate Josephi and Andrew Taylor, Nancy Keesing, Thomas Keneally, John Kinsella, Manoly Lascaris, David Leavitt, Gerard Lee, Geoffrey Lehmann, Kathy Lette, Alan Lightman, Stephen McClymont, Mark McKenna, Robert Macklin, Tony Maniaty, David Marr, Mandy Martin, Gillian Mears, Drusilla Modjeska, Frank Moorhouse, Mal Morgan, Les Murray, Philip Neilson, Cees Nooteboom, Mark O’Connor, Carlo Olivieri, Margaret Olley, Michael Ondaatje, Tony Page, Peter Porter, Pixie Pratt [Pixie O’Harris], Judith Rodriguez, David Rowbotham, Ethel Rowbotham, Lilian Roxon, John Ralston Saul, Jaya Savige, Scripsi (Michael Heyward and Peter Craven], Penelope Seidler, Tom Shapcott, Lidija Simkus-Pocius (Lidija Simkute), Ian Sinnamon, Norah Smallwood, Jeffrey Smart, Christina Stead, Lurline Stuart, John Tranter, James Tulip (Jim Tulip), UQP [Frank W Thompson, Roger McDonald, Craig Munro], Christopher Wallace-Crabbe (Chris Wallace-Crabbe), Robin Wallace-Crabbe, Jacki Weaver, Peter Weir, Gough Whitlam, Phyllis Webb, Patrick White, and many others.

This collection is comprised mostly of drafts of Anthony Lawrence’s published and unpublished poetry and prose dating between 1989 and 2021. This collection also includes a series of unpublished playscripts and filmscripts by the author, research materials (mostly relating to Richard Hugo) compiled by the author, book review cuttings (of the author’s 2000 novel In the half light), personal scrapbooks, and awards and commendations presented to the author.