Novels

Poetry and short stories

"There's a pressing sense of mortality in his work and a desire to ask the big questions, even as he satirises them. Drawn to the discipline of science, Goldsworthy's poems are full of the language of the laboratory ...matter, evidence, elements, chemicals... the stuff we are made of, but at the same time frustrated by these limitations into asking what else we might be. He's interested in 'The Dark Side of the Head', the things we can only know in flashes, like glimpsing a skink, but he also retains a rationalist's scepticism of the ecstatic — that "thoughtlessly exquisite" evening sky in 'Sunset' won't fool him into rapture".

"His precise wit operates on every level, from the sonic (a concealed dove really does say hidden here, hidden here) to the conceptual (the human body really is packed tight like an attempt on the record of filling a Mini). The general impression is of a fastidious insistence that the particular comes first, and any general comment that follows had better be particular too."

Libretti

Film writing

• Ebbtide (1994)
• Passion (1999)
• Maestro (2008), currently in production.

• 1979: Western Australian Sesquicentenary Literary Prize for the short-story Memoirs of a small 'm' marxist.
• 1982: Commonwealth Poetry Prize Readings from Ecclesiastes
• 1982: FAW Anne Elder Poetry Award, joint winner for Readings from Ecclesiastes
• 1982: South Australian Premier's Award, for Readings from Ecclesiastes
• 1984: Government Biennial Literature Prize (South Australia), for Readings from Ecclesiastes
• 1988: Australian Bicentennial Literary Prize for Poetry
• 1991: NBC Banjo Awards, NBC Turnbull Fox Phillips Poetry Prize, shortlisted for This Goes with That
• 1998: ABC / ABA Bicentennial Literary Award, Poetry Australia Literary Award
• 2002: Robert Helpmann Award for Best Opera and Best New Australian Work for Batavia
• 2002: Green Room Award for Special Creative Achievement for Batavia
• 2003: Colin Roderick Award, shortlisted for Three Dog Night
• 2004: Miles Franklin Award. Shortlisted for Three Dog Night
• 2004: FAW Christina Stead Award for Three Dog Night
• 2004: The Courier-Mail Book of the Year. Shortlisted for Three Dog Night
• 2004: Queensland Premier's Literary Awards. Shortlisted for Three Dog Night
• 2004: New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards. Shortlisted for Three Dog Night
• 2005: International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, longlisted for Three Dog Night
• 2009: Prime Minister's Literary Awards. Shortlisted for Everything I Knew
• 2010: Order of Australia. (AM) Citation: "For service to literature as an author and poet, through arts administration, and to the community."

Novels

• Maestro (1989)
• Magpie (1992)
• Honk If You are Jesus (1992)
• Wish (1995)
• Keep it Simple, Stupid (1996)
• Three Dog Night (2003)
• Everything I Knew (2008)

Poetry collections

• Readings from Ecclesiastes, (1982)
• This Goes with That: Selected Poems 1970—1990, (1991)
• After the Ball, (1992)
• If, Then: Poems and Songs, (1996)
• New Selected Poems (2001)
• Tattered Joys (2002)

Short story collections

• Archipelagoes (1982)
• Zooing (1986)
• Bleak Rooms (1988)
• Little Deaths (1993)
• The List of All Answers (2004)
• Gravel (2010)

Collected works

• Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam (1999)

• Maestro, film based on the novel (in preproduction)
• The Kiss, short film by Ashlee Page adapted from the short story The Kiss (2008)