Kate Lilley (born 1960) is a contemporary Australian poet and academic.
Kate Lilley was born in Perth, Western Australia and moved to Sydney with her family. She is the daughter of writers Dorothy Hewett and Merv Lilley.
After studying at the University of Sydney she completed a PhD at University of London on masculine elegy.
Career
Lilley published her first volume of poems, Versary, in 2002. She is Associate Professor of English at The University of Sydney. Lilley edited The Blazing World by Margaret Cavendish (Penguin Classics, 1994). In 2010 she edited Dorothy Hewett's Selected Poems for UWA Press.
Lilley has a "featured cameo" as Vera Newby in the film The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith.
Porter Wagoner in a nudie suit
flashes the crowd an embroidered Hi!
He kids around trading jokes with the hee-haw,
then the lights go down and the teardrops start.
...
As the plot rocks back and forth on a pinhead
count to fifteen very slowly.
By that time you should be alone again
contemplating your evening.
...
quarto doesn’t last a weak crush lingers
like a festival of moss
the clerk of all passports takes me round
for a drink at a popular nightspot
...
Resentment starts to go backwards in search of a new hermeneutic
the appointment slipped your mind that's no excuse
I'm the kind who'll sit in the waiting room and watch the second hand
for as long as it takes it's something I'm proud of I won't
...