Works by
Dorothy Porter
(Aka Dorothy Featherstone Porter)
(Librettist, Lyricist, Poet, Writer)
[1954 - ]

Fiction

Verse Novels

• Akhenaten (1992)

• The Monkey's Mask: An Erotic Murder Mystery (1994)
  From the pen of one of Australia's most innovative writers comes a totally unique experience. It's a crime thriller. It's where high art meets low life, passion meets betrayal, and poetry faces profanity on the streets of a harsh modern city... A lesbian detective novel in verse form.

• What a Piece of Work (1999)
  Audio cassette. 
  As the new Superintendent of Callan Park Psychiatric Hospital, Dr Peter Cyren must perform medical alchemy - turn diseased minds into healthy ones. But in the case of his own soul, this sacred process works irrevocably in reverse. A novel in verse from one of Australia's leading poets.

• Wild Surmise (2002)
  Alex Leefson is Astronomy's glamour girl, in love with the Satellite Europa and the equally unreachable Phoebe. Meanwhile, her husband Daniel rages against his tedious job, his failing health, and his wife's infidelity.

• El Dorado (2007)
  There is a serial child killer stalking the streets of Melbourne. He kills his victims gently and places a gold mark on their head. The mark of El Dorado.
  
  He doesn't kill because he hates children, but because he loves them. He believes in Childhood Innocence, and he will kill to entomb them there.
  
  This is a book about a friendship under siege, and about how jealousy and betrayal cast very long shadows – which can stalk you to the grave.
  
  El Dorado is Dorothy Porter's finest verse novel to date. Unflinching and morally uncompromising, it is both a complex thriller and a completely unique, and compelling, reading experience from Australia's most maverick and versatile poet.

Young Adult

• Rookwood (1991)
  While working with a classmate on a genealogy assignment, a fourteen-year-old Australian teenager discovers that her grandmother is hiding a dark family secret.

• The Witch Number (1993)
  In 1968, in the Blue Mountains of Australia, thirteen-year-old Shelley meets Leah, also thirteen, who lures her into a sinister world of witchcraft and danger.

Music

• Lyrics

  • Before Time Could Change Us (2005), music by Paul Grabowsky
    Paul Grabowsky, Katie Noonan and Dorothy Porter are three of Australia's finest artists - each unique, extremely talented and famous in their own particular field of endeavor. On this exciting new double CD, the jazz musician, the singer and the poet have spun a magic piece of music. Before Time Could Change Us is a work of extraordinary breadth and delicacy. Not simply a work of jazz, it borrows from all manner of genre and art to create something unique, a fluid work of breathtaking beauty and emotion. You've never heard Katie Noonan sing like this before. In fact, you will never have heard anything quite like Before Time Could Change Us,

Poetry

• Little Hoodlum (1975)

• Bison (1979)

• The Night Parrot (1984)

• Driving Too Fast (1989)

• Crete (1996)

• Other Worlds: Poems 1997-2001 (2001)