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Antigone Kefala (28 May 1931 – 3 December 2022)[1] was an Australian poet and prose-writer of Greek-Romanian heritage. She was a member of the Literature Board of the Australia Council and is acknowledged as being an important voice in capturing the migrant experience in contemporary Australia.[2] In 2017, Kefala was awarded the State Library of Queensland Poetry Collection Judith Wright Calanthe Award at the Queensland Literary Awards for her collection of poems entitled Fragments.[3]
Born in Brăila, Romania in 1931,[4] Kefala and family moved to Greece and then New Zealand after World War II. Having studied French Literature at Victoria University and obtained a MA, she relocated to Sydney, Australia in 1960.[5] There she taught English as a second language and worked as a university and arts administrator. Her poetry and prose is written in both Greek and English, with Absence: New and Selected Poems reissued in a second edition in 1998.
Her work, written in free verse, has been described as having an almost metaphysical detachment.[6] It is characterised by an austere allusiveness unusual in Australian poetry. Aside from Greek and English it has been translated into Czech and French.[7]
In 2009, Antigone Kefala: A Writer’s Journey, an anthology of reviews, essays and analytical writing of Kefala's works edited by Professor Vrasidas Karalis and Helen Nickas was published by Owl Publishing.[8] In 2021, a collection of essays on her prose and poetry titled Antigone Kefala: New Australian Modernities, edited by Elizabeth McMahon and Brigitta Olubas, was published by UWA Publishing.
In November 2022, Kefala won the Patrick White Award.[9] A week later, she died on 3 December 2022, at the age of 91.[4]
Poetry
- The Alien (Makar Press: 1973)
- Thirsty Weather (Outback: 1978)
- European Notebook (Hale & Iremonger: 1988)
- Absence: New and selected poems (Sydney, Hale & Iremonger: 1992, 2nd ed. 1998)
- Poems: A selection (Melbourne, Owl Publishing: 2000)
- Fragments, Artarmon, N.S.W. Giramondo, 2016, ISBN 978-1-925336-19-1
Prose fiction
- The First Journey (Wild & Woolley: 1975)
- The Island (Hale & Iremonger: 1984)
- Sunday Morning in The Oxford book of Australian Short Stories selected by Michael Wilding (Melbourne : Oxford University Press: 1994)
- Summer Visit: Three Novellas (Giramondo Publishing: 2003)
- Sydney Journals (Giramondo Publishing: 2008) ISBN 978-1-920882-41-9
- Max: The Confessions of a Cat (Owl Publishing: 2009)
- 2017 Queensland Literary Awards – State Library of Queensland Poetry Collection – Judith Wright Calanthe Award for Fragments[10]
- 2022 Patrick White Award – winner[11]
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