Between Two Tides

Narrative poem by R. D. Fitzgerald

Between Two Tides

Author	R. D. Fitzgerald
Language	English
Publisher	Halstead Press, Sydney
Publication date	1952
Publication place	Australia
Media type	Print (hardcover)
Pages	79
Preceded by	Heemskerck Shoals
Followed by	This Night's Orbit : Verses

Between Two Tides (1952) is a long narrative poem by Australian poet R. D. Fitzgerald, which included illustrations by Norman Lindsay. It won the Grace Leven Prize for Poetry in 1952.^[1]

Outline

The poem is "drawn from An Account of the Natives of the Tongan Islands by J. M. Martin (1817)", which "Fitzgerald had worked on intermittently over many years". "In five parts, the poem relates and discusses the life and exploits of Will Mariner, a young sailor on the privateer Port au Prince, which was attacked and burned by Tongan natives in 1806."^[2]

Reviews

A reviewer in The Sydney Morning Herald noted that the "theme of the eternally troubled mind with which man regards his destiny is not too profound to overload a simple narrative. Here is a story-poem which will please those whose palates have never become too sophisticated to reject the flavour of Treasure Island or Masefield's Dauber."^[3]

Awards

1952 - winner Grace Leven Prize for Poetry

References

^ Austlit - Between Two Tides by R. D. Fitzgerald
^ The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature, 2nd edition, p281
^ "Reviews in Brief", The Sydney Morning Herald, 20 December 1952, p8

Grace Leven Prize for Poetry

1947–1949

Pacific Sea by Nan McDonald (1947)
A Drum for Ben Boyd by Francis Webb (1948)
Woman to Man by Judith Wright (1949)

1950–1959

No award (1950)
The Great South Land : An Epic Poem by Rex Ingamells (1951)
Between Two Tides by R. D. Fitzgerald (1952)
Tumult of the Swans by Roland Robinson (1953)
Thirty Poems by John Thompson (1954)
The Wandering Islands by A. D. Hope (1955)
No award (1956)
Elegiac and Other Poems by Leonard Mann (1957)
Antipodes in Shoes by Geoffrey Dutton (1958)
The Wind at Your Door by R. D. Fitzgerald (1959)

1960–1969

Man in a Landscape by Colin Thiele (1960)
Time on Fire by Thomas Shapcott (1961)
Southmost Twelve by R. D. Fitzgerald (1962)
The North-Bound Rider by Ian Mudie (1963)
All the Room by David Rowbotham (1964)
The Ilex Tree by Les Murray and Geoffrey Lehmann (1965)
The Talking Clothes: Poems by William Hart-Smith (1966)
Collected Poems 1936-1967 by Douglas Stewart (1967)
Selected Poems 1942-1968 by David Campbell (1968)
A Counterfeit Silence: Selected Poems by Randolph Stow (1969)

1970–1979

Letters to Live Poets by Bruce Beaver (1970)
Judith Wright: Collected Poems, 1942-1970 by Judith Wright (1971)
Collected Poems 1936-1970 by James McAuley (1971)
Head-waters by Peter Skrzynecki (1972)
A Soapbox Omnibus by Rodney Hall (1973)
Neighbours in a Thicket: Poems by David Malouf (1974)
Selected Poems (1975) by Gwen Harwood (1975)
Selected Poems 1939–1975 by John Blight (1976)
Selected Poems by Robert Adamson (1977)
Sometimes Gladness : Collected Poems 1954-1978 by Bruce Dawe (1978)
The Man in the Honeysuckle by David Campbell (1979)

1980–1989

The Boys Who Stole the Funeral by Les Murray (1980)
Nero's Poems: Translations of the Public and Private Poems of the Emperor Nero by Geoffrey Lehmann (1981)
Tide Country by Vivian Smith (1982)
Collected Poems by Peter Porter (1983)
The Three Fates and Other Poems by Rosemary Dobson (1984)
Selected Poems 1963-1983 by Robert Gray (1985)
The Amorous Cannibal by Chris Wallace-Crabbe (1985)
Washing the Money : Poems with Photographs by Rhyll McMaster (1986)
Occasions of Birds and Other Poems by Elizabeth Riddell (1987)
Under Berlin by John Tranter (1988)
A Tremendous World in Her Head by Dorothy Hewett (1989)