Bruce Dawe

He taught literature in universities for over 30 years. Dawe's poetry collection, Sometimes Gladness, sold over 100,000 copies in several printings.

• Name — Bruce Dawe • Birth Name — Donald Bruce Dawe • Born — 15 February 1930 • Birthplace — Fitzroy, Victoria • Died — 1 April 2020 • Place of death — Caloundra, Queensland. Australia • Language — English • Awards — Officer of the Order of Australia • Years Active — 1947–2020

Bruce Dawe was born in 1930 in Fitzroy, Victoria. Dawe's paternal ancestors originated in Wyke Regis in Dorset, England. The family moved to Australia in the mid-19th century. His mother was of Lowland Scottish ancestry - she often recited Scottish poems from her childhood. Dawe's parents came from farming families in Victoria. Dawe was the only one in his family to complete primary school. His parents and four siblings always encouraged him to write poetry (his youngest sister also wrote poetry). As a child, Dawe attended six schools. At age 16, he dropped out of Northcote High School in Melbourne without completing his Leaving Certificate. He then worked as a clerk, a labourer, a sales assistant, an office boy in an advertising agency and a copy boy at The Truth and The Sun News-Pictorial. Dawe also worked as a labourer in the Public Works Department, as a tailer-out in various Melbourne saw-mills and as a farm-hand in the Cann River valley. In 1953, Dawe completed his adult matriculation by part-time study. In 1954, he enrolled at Melbourne University on a teaching scholarship. However, at the end of 1954, he moved to Sydney, working as a labourer in a glass factory and later in a factory manufacturing batteries. Also during 1954, Dawe converted to Catholicism. In 1956, Dawe returned to Melbourne, where he worked as a postman for two years and as a self-employed gardener. In 1959, Dawe joined the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), initially as a trainee telegraphist but remustered as an education assistant. After completing his recruit training at RAAF Base Rathmines, he was posted to Ballarat, Victoria. On commencing duties as an education assistant, Dawe was posted to RAAF Base Wagga, Victoria Barracks Melbourne and Toowoomba, Queensland. In 1966, Dawe was posted to Malaysia for six months. During this posting, Dawe wrote the lyrics for the school song of the RAAF School on Penang. This song was used until the school’s closing in 1988. After leaving Malaysia, Dawe returned to Melbourne.

Dawe wrote poetry about ordinary people in modern Australia, their interests in cars, novels, films and other popular items. He also wrote about abortion, environmental degradation, and the treatment of the Australian Aboriginal community. In discussing Dawe's poetry, John Kinsella remarked" Always behind Dawe’s seemingly playful banter with us, his readers and public, is his commitment to sympathy and connection with the less empowered, the disenfranchised, downtrodden, neglected and exploited.

On 27 January 1964, Dawe married Gloria Desley Blain, Between December 1964 and July 1969, the couple had four children: Brian, twins Jamie and Katrina, and Melissa. Gloria died in 1997. Dawe died in Caloundra, Queensland, on 1 April 2020, at age 90.

• Title — |Year — |First published — |Reprinted/collected • "Enter Without So Much as Knocking" — 1959 — No Fixed Address: Poems by Bruce Dawe, Longman Cheshire, 1962, pp. 11–12 • "And a Good Friday Was Had by All" — 1963 — Twentieth Century, vol. 18 Spring 1963, pg. 334 — Condolences of the Season: Selected Poems, Longman Cheshire, 1971, p. 41 • "Homo Suburbiensis" — 1964 — Twentieth Century, vol. 23 Winter 1969, pg. 357 — Condolences of the Season: Selected Poems, Longman Cheshire, 1971, p. 41 • "In the New Landscape" — 1966 — Modern Australian Writing edited by Geoffrey Dutton, Collins, 1966, pp. 35–36 — An Eye for a Tooth: Poems, Cheshire, 1968, pp. 22–23 • "Homecoming" — 1968 — The Age, 6 July 1968, — Beyond the Subdivisions: Poems, Cheshire, 1969, p. 2 • "Drifters" — 1968 — Australian Letters vol. 8 no. 1, January 1968 — An Eye for a Tooth: Poems, Cheshire, 1968, p. 14 • "Miss Mac" — 1969 • "Somewhere Friendly" — 1969 • "Search and Destroy" — 1970 • "Weapons Training" — 1970 — Quadrant, no. 44 Winter 1970 — Condolences of the Season: Selected Poems, Longman Cheshire, 1971, p. 118 • "The Corn Flake" — 1975 • "Going" — 1978 • "The Sadness of Madonas" — 1985 • "The Wholly Innocent" — 1986 • "The High Mark (for Nick Lynch)" — 1987 • "The Beach" — 1991 • "Gordon's Quest" — 1995 • Beyond Limbo — 1996 • A Park in the Balkans — 1996 • The Human Moment — 1996 • Life Cycle — 2009

• 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. • Attuned to Alien Moonlight: The Poetry of Bruce Dawe, by Dennis Haskell, St Lucia, UQP, 2002