Bruce Dawe

Donald Bruce Dawe AO (born 28 February 1930) is an Australian poet, and is considered by many as one of the most influential Australian poets.

Biography

Dawe began writing poetry at an early age, influenced by writers such as John Milton and Dylan Thomas. Dawe's poetry revolves around Australian society, politics and culture. Dawe’s anti-war poems originate from his experiences during the time of the Vietnam War, and the horror of death is always evident in Dawe’s war poems ("The Museum Attendant", "Turn Again Home", "Around El Salvador"). Dawe often uses long sentences in his poems such as "Drifters", which is only two sentences long. This is done to preserve the moment and the mood of the poem, as most of them occur over a short period of time. He caught the readers attention and their attraction to encourage others to look up to and admire him.

Dawe was born in Fitzroy, Victoria. At the age of 16, he left school to become a legal clerk, but was eventually fired for lack of attention to his work. He later worked as a salesman, laborer in a saw mill, office assistant, insurance salesman, copy boy with "The Truth" and "The Sun" newspapers, then moved to the country to work as a labourer on a dairy farm. Eventually he moved to the city and worked as a labourer in Melbourne.

During a stint in the Royal Australian Air Force, he worked as a teacher of English at Downlands College. He taught there for two years before deciding to pursue his dream of becoming a palaeontologist. After attending an abridged course at the University of Victoria, Dawe set out for Africa. However, his plans were cut short after contracting malaria. With his dreams temporarily on hold, Dawe was appointed as a lecturer in Literature at Darling Downs Institute of Advanced Education, and later went on to work as a professor at the University of Southern Queensland.

He continues to write, and frequently makes stories for his grandchildren, featuring them in magical adventures. His poems have frequently featured in Australia's Board of Studies annual examinations such as the NSW School Certificate (SC), the NSW Higher School Certificate (HSC), and the Australian English Competition, as well as in the the Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) curriculum. He has published an anthology; aptly named 'Sometimes Gladness'.

In 1999 Dawe endowed a fund to establish the Bruce Dawe National Poetry Prize. The prize of AUD$1500 is awarded annually, administered by the Faculty of Arts in the University of Southern Queensland, and is to encourage poets in Australia and to recognise the contribution poets make to Australian culture.cite web |title= The Bruce Dawe National Poetry Prize |publisher= UQS Australia Faculty of the Arts |url= http://www.usq.edu.au/arts/community/poetryprize/default.htm |accessdate= 2007-09-15]

Awards

* 1965 - winner of the Myer Poetry Prizecite web|title="Brisbane Writers Festival - Bruce Dawe"|publisher=Brisbane Writers Festival|url=http://www.brisbanewritersfestival.com.au/2003/content/standard_c1.asp?name=Bio_Dawe_Bruce|accessdate=2007-08-26]
* 1967 - winner of the Ampol Arts Award for Creative Literature
* 1973 - winner of the Dame Mary Gilmore Medalcite web|title="Modern Australian poetry - Australia's Culture Portal"|publisher=Australian Government - Culture and Recreation Portal|date=2007-08-24|url=http://www.cultureandrecreation.gov.au/articles/poetry/|accessdate=2007-08-26]
* 1978 - winner of the Grace Leven Prize for Poetry
* 1979 - winner of the Braille Book of the Year
* 1980 - winner of the Patrick White Literary Award
* 1984 - winner of the Christopher Brennan Award
* 1992 - made an Officer of the Order of Australia: "In recognition of service to Austalian literature, particularly in the field of poetry"cite web |title= It's an Honour |publisher= Australian Government |url= http://www.itsanhonour.gov.au/honours/honour_roll/search.cfm?aus_award_id=869738&search_type=quick&showInd=true |accessdate = 2007-01-11]
* 1997 - winner of the inaugural Philip Hodgins Memorial Medal at the Mildura Writer's Festivalcite web |title= Mildura Writers' Festival, Thursday 20 - Sunday 23 July 2006 |publisher= Arts Festival 07 Mildura/Wentworth |url= http://www.mwaf.com.au/html/mainnav/writers.html |accessdate= 2007-08-04 ]
* 2001 - awarded the Centenary Medal for "distinguished service to the arts through poetry"cite web |title= It's an Honour |publisher= Australian Government |url= http://www.itsanhonour.gov.au/honours/honour_roll/search.cfm?aus_award_id=1118824&search_type=quick&showInd=true |accessdate = 2007-01-11]

Works

* "No Fixed Address" (Cheshire, 1962)
* "A Need of Similar Name" (Cheshire, 1965)
* "An Eye for a Tooth" (Cheshire, 1968)
* "Beyond the subdivisions : poems" (Cheshire, 1969)
* "Heat-Wave. Melbourne" (Sweeney Reed, 1970)
* "Condolences of the season : selected poems" (Cheshire, 1971)
* "Just a Dugong at Twilight: Mainly Light Verse" (Cheshire, 1975)
* "Sometimes Gladness: Collected Poems 1954-1978". (Longman Cheshire, 1978)
* "Selected Poems". (London, Longman, 1984)
* "Towards sunrise: poems 1979-1986" (Longman Cheshire, 1986)
* "This side of silence : poems 1987-1990" (Longman Cheshire, 1990)
* "Mortal instruments : poems 1990-1995" (Longman, 1995)
* "Sometimes Gladness: collected poems, 1954-1997", 5th Edition (Longman Cheshire, 1997)
* "A Poet's People". (South Melbourne, Addison Wesley Longman, 1998)

Critical Studies

* "The Man down the Street", edited by Ian V. Hansen, Melbourne, V.A.T.E., 1972
* "Times and Seasons: An Introduction to Bruce Dawe", by Basil Shaw, Melbourne, Cheshire, 1974
* "Adjacent Worlds: A Literary Life of Bruce Dawe", by Ken Goodwin, Melbourne, Longman Cheshire, 1988
* "Bruce Dawe: Essays and Opinions",edited by K.L. Goodwin, Melbourne, Longman Cheshire, 1990
* "Bruce Dawe", by Peter Kuch, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1995 .

Some of his poems

* "The Wholly Innocent"
* "Enter Without So Much as Knocking" (1959)
* "Drifters" (1968)
* "Homecoming" (1968)
* "The Corn Flake" (1975)
* "The Sadness of Madonnas" (1985)
* "Somewhere Friendly" [http://arts.monash.edu.au/english/research/exams1914-2006/nsw/nsw-1972-hsc.pdf poem]
* "Weapons Training"
* "Miss Mac"
* "Life Cycle"

Weapons TrainingUp the wallBedroom ConversationsBig Jim

References

* [http://www.mwaf.com.au/html/mainnav/writers.html Mildura Writer's Festival] (Retrieved 4 August 2007)
* Cwisfa Lim, 2007, "Bruce Dawe and his world", Australia, CWX Publishers.
* [http://nla.gov.au/nla.pic-an11678576 Portrait of Bruce Dawe taken at Canberra Writers' Week 1995] , by Virginia Wallace-Crabbe, National Library of Australia (Retrieved 10 August 2007)
* [http://www.brisbanewritersfestival.com.au/2003/content/standard_c1.asp?name=Bio_Dawe_Bruce Brisbane Writers Festival - Bruce Dawe] (Retrieved 26 August 2007)
* [http://www.filmaust.com.au/programs/teachers_notes/6030_ausbio_dawenotes.pdf Australian Biography - Bruce Dawe, 1930 - Poet] (Retrieved 1 November 2007]