Paul Hetherington (born 6 March 1958) is an Australian poet and Emeritus Professor at the University of Canberra, Australia. He worked as Director of Publications and Events at the National Library of Australia in the Australian Public Service.
Hetherington completed a doctoral thesis at the University of Western Australia in 1989. Hetherington worked as a sessional tutor while undertaking postgraduate studies and then accepted the job of Publications and Events Coordinator at Fremantle Arts Centre in 1989. In 1990 he joined the Public Service. In 1994 he became director of the National Library's Publications Branch. While in this position he published his own poetry under the National Library of Australia imprint.
After leaving the National Library of Australia following the Donald Friend Diary controversy he lectured at Faculty of Arts and Design at the University of Canberra in 2010 and continued there until 2023. He served on numerous boards in Canberra, ACT and helped to found the now defunct 'ACT Writers Centre'.
Hetherington's decided to write poetry at the age of 11 and has commented that 'One of the ways I recognise the poetic is when I find works in which language is condensed, ramifying, polysemous and unparaphraseable.'
The National Library of Australia published Hetherington's poetry chapbook while he was employed at the National Library, Mapping Wildwood Road in 1990 and Fremantle Arts Centre Press published Acts Themselves Trivial, his first full-length poetry collection in 1991.
Paul Hetherington was co-editor in 1983 with Victor Bivoltsis and Andrew Masterson of a short-lived literary journal 'Perverse Pleasures'. In what is now considered controversial for its known links to paedophilia, from 2003 to 2006 Hetherington edited the final three volumes of the National Library of Australia's four-volume edition of the diaries of the Australian artist Donald Friend. Volume four of the published diaries covers FriendâÂÂs time in Bali and contains explicit accounts of sexual relations with children, several of whom are named. Hetherington has been reported as saying:
"I donâÂÂt think Friend behaved in a way that would attract much criticism from people today, which at the time didnâÂÂt attract particular criticism either."
And, to the ABC:
"I don't know that we can today go into the complexity of the relationships between Friend and the young men and women who worked as houseboys â essentially that's how he saw them â in the 1960s and 1970s in Bali. Friend's activities and attitudes ⦠throughout his life, and still to this day, [have] met with a wide range of responses ⦠people are entitled and should make up their own minds about what they think of Friend and these activities and his artistic work."
In a review in The Australian, of the diaries Frank Campbell wrote, "Hetherington politely observes, âÂÂFriend was entirely unsuited to a life of heterosexual monogamy.â Well, itâÂÂs all right Paul, heâÂÂs dead, so itâÂÂs safe to call Friend a paedophile." Hetherington is recorded as saying on radio, <blockquote>
"There are some things in the diaries obviously that some people will find less attractive than others, but in publishing them, we wanted to publish the diaries as they are, more or less, with the sensitivity that I talked about earlier, because we think that it's important that people can read the material for themselves and make their own mind up about them."</blockquote>
2020: (with Cassandra Atherton): Prose Poetry: An Introduction, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. (Hardcover ; Paperback ; Ebook )
2001: Stepping Away: Selected Poems, Canberra: Molonglo Press ()
2015 (with Jen Webb as photographer): Watching the World: Impressions of Canberra, Canberra: Blemish Books ()
2016: Burnt Umber, Crawley, WA: University of Western Australia Publishing ()
2016: Gallery of Antique Art, Canberra: Recent Work Press ()
2017: ÃÂkaros. Canberra: Recent Work Press ()
2018: Moonlight on Oleander: Prose Poems, Crawley, WA: UWA Publishing ()
2019: Palace of Memory: An Elegy, Canberra: Recent Work Press ()
2020: Fugitive Letters, Canberra: Recent Work Press () [with Cassandra Atherton]
2022: Ragged Disclosures, Canberra: Recent Work Press ()
2012: Chicken and Other Poems, ed. Judy Johnson, Wagtail 119, Picaro Press (ISSN 1444-8424)
2013: (with Anita Fitton as digital artist): ' 'Spectral resemblances' ', Belconnen, ACT Faculty of Arts and Design, University of Canberra ()
2015: (with Cassandra Atherton, Paul Munden, Jen Webb, Jordan Williams): Jars IPSI Series: Authorised Theft, Canberra, ACT: International Poetry Studies Institute, Faculty of Arts and Design, University of Canberra ()
2016: (with Cassandra Atherton, Paul Munden, Jen Webb, Jordan Williams): The Taoist Elements: Earth IPSI Series: Authorised Theft, Canberra, ACT: International Poetry Studies Institute, Faculty of Arts and Design, University of Canberra ()
2017: (with Cassandra Atherton, Paul Munden, Jen Webb, Jordan Williams): Colours: Blue, IPSI Series: Authorised Theft, Canberra, ACT: International Poetry Studies Institute, Faculty of Arts and Design, University of Canberra ()
2018: (with Cassandra Atherton, Paul Munden, Jen Webb): Prosody, Enjambment, IPSI Series: Authorised Theft, Canberra, ACT: International Poetry Studies Institute, Faculty of Arts and Design, University of Canberra
2019: (with Cassandra Atherton, Paul Munden, Jen Webb): The Six Senses, Sour, IPSI Series: Authorised Theft, Canberra, ACT: International Poetry Studies Institute, Faculty of Arts and Design, University of Canberra
2021: (with Cassandra Atherton, Oz Hardwick, Paul Munden, Jen Webb): Five Ages: Golden Age, IPSI Series: Authorised Theft, Canberra, ACT: International Poetry Studies Institute, Faculty of Arts and Design, University of Canberra ()
2022: (with Cassandra Atherton, Oz Hardwick, Paul Munden, Jen Webb): Five Tastes: Sour, IPSI Series: Authorised Theft, Canberra, ACT: International Poetry Studies Institute, Faculty of Arts and Design, University of Canberra ()
2023: (with Cassandra Atherton, Oz Hardwick, Paul Munden, Jen Webb): Five Oceans: Indian Ocean, IPSI Series: Authorised Theft, Canberra, ACT: International Poetry Studies Institute, Faculty of Arts and Design, University of Canberra) ()
2003: The Diaries of Donald Friend, Volume 2, National Library of Australia, Canberra ()
2005: The Diaries of Donald Friend, Volume 3, National Library of Australia, Canberra ()
2006: The Diaries of Donald Friend, Volume 4, National Library of Australia, Canberra ()
2014: (with Shane Strange and Jen Webb): Creative Manoeuvres: Writing, Making, Being, Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing ()
Among the awards Hetherington has received are: