The Best 100 Poems of Gwen Harwood is a collection of poems by Australian poet Gwen Harwood, published by Black Inc., in 2014, chosen by the author's son John Harwood.[1]
As the title suggests the collection contains 100 poems by the author, including a number of poems which were published under the author's pseudonyms of "Walter Lehmann", "Francis Geyer", and "Miriam Stone".[2]
The collection was reprinted by the same publisher in May 2022.[3]
Writing in Australian Book Review Ann-Marie Priest noted that "Harwood is very much a poet of memory, and in both late and early works evokes her childhood and youth in vivid narratives." While she also noted the absence of some important Harwood poems she conceded that "with a poet of so many moods, so many voices, so many gifts, any selection calls for hard choices."[4]
Chris Wallace-Crabbe felt he was able to discern the reason behind the book's publication: "Plainly, this book has been planned as a school text from the very start. It seems economically produced; and it contains not one jot or tittle of ancillary information, which could be siphoned into student essays. Above all, two of two most written-on sonnets have been omitted, one being replaced by a rewrite."[5]
In Sydney Review of Books Simon West looked at Harwood's career and commented of this volume: "Perhaps the sales strategy of Black Inc. to have the word 'best' in a number of their titles has its origin in this difficulty. In the case of a selective anthology such as The Best 100 Poems of Gwen Harwood, both the adjective and the magical number have a trace of the ludicrous. One would like to think that Harwood had reached a level of importance where gratuitous boosting was unnecessary."[6]
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