Rosemary Huisman writes from where she is. This does not
necessarily mean a romantic concern with self-expression, but it does mean
paying attention to her surroundings—natural, social, political.
It especially includes paying attention to the language used by other people.
The accuracy and clarity of what she aims for is not some objective truth,
but it is what is truthful for her, to her perception and understanding.
Rosemary
Huisman (née Lowe) was born in 1941 at Casino, on the Richmond River
in northern New South Wales. At seventeen she left the district to go to
Sydney University; on graduation she worked as a computer programmer before
making the great trek ‘overseas’. She returned to Sydney University
to complete a PhD (a computer assisted study of the language of Old English
poetry, including the great poem Beowulf) and was appointed lecturer in Early
English Literature and Language in 1979. In 1991 she became Head of Semiotics
(semiotics: the study of meaning-making practices). She retired from the
University of Sydney in 2003, where she is now an Honorary Associate Professor
to the Department of English.
She has published poems in Southerly, The Bulletin, and the Sydney
Morning Herald. Her many academic publications include The Written
Poem, Semiotic Conventions from Old to Modern English (London & New York, hb 1998 and
pb 2000) and six chapters in Narrative and Media, with Helen Fulton, Julian
Murphet and Anne Dunn (Cambridge, 2005).
