Goldsworthy's novels have sold over a quarter million copies, and, with his poetry and short stories, have been translated into many European and Asian languages. He has won major literary prizes across most genres: for poetry, the short story, the novel, plays and opera.
Novels
His first novel
Maestro was reissued as part of the Angus & Robertson Australian Classics series, and was voted one of the Top 40 Australian books of all time by members of the Australian Society of Authors.
Poetry and short stories
His
New Selected Poems were published in Australia and the UK in 2001; and his
Collected Stories appeared in Australia in 2004.
The Poetry Archive describes his poetry as follows:
"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".
The Australian expatriate writer, Clive James, comments that Goldsworthy's poetry is often seen as a sideline, but argues that it is "at the centre of his achievement". James writes:
"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
Goldsworthy also writes opera libretti. He wrote the libretti for the Richard Mills operas,
Summer of the Seventeenth Doll and
Batavia, the latter winning Mills and Goldsworthy the 2002 Robert Helpmann Award for Best Opera and Best New Australian Work. The Sydney premiere at the Sydney Opera House on 19 August 2006 was conducted by the composer and attended by the librettist.
Film writing
Goldworthy is credited as the writer on three movies:
- Ebbtide (1994)
- Passion (1999)
- Maestro (2008), currently in production.