Vincent Buckley was born on 8 July 1925 in Romsey, Victoria. He was educated at St. Patrick's College (1938-1942) and the University of Melbourne, where he received a B.A. (1949) and M.A.(1953), prior to undertaking further study at St. Catharine's College, Cambridge University (1955-1957). He served in the Royal Australian Air Force during the Second World War. He worked as a public servant before joining the teaching staff at Melbourne University in 1951, where he became the inaugural Lockie Fellow in Australian Literature and Creative Writing (1958-1960), Senior Lecturer (1961-1963), Reader (1964-1967) and held a Personal Chair in Poetry until his early retirement (1967-1987). Buckley was also a member of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.
Vincent Buckley was a poet, academic, editor and critic of Australian and Irish literature and the recipient of many awards. In the 1950s and 1960s he had considerable intellectual and literary influence in Melbourne through his writing and teaching. Buckley, with his strong identity with Irish culture was a important figure in the Catholic intellectual debate of the period, a time in which the Australian Labor movement was wrestling with the Cold War and the emergence of the DLP.
He published eight volumes of poetry and several critical studies, and edited several anthologies of verse and the magazine Prospect (1958-1963). His period as poetry editor of The
Bulletin (1961-1963) gave rise to the publication of many new poets. His critical writing includes volumes on poetry, the novelist Henry Handel Richardson, and the Campion paintings by Leonard French.
In 1969 he founded the Committee for Civil Rights in Ireland, and his interest in Irish Republican politics and a love for Ireland saw him visit and live in Ireland throughout his later life. Buckley died in November 1988.
The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature says of Last Poems (1991) published posthumously and edited, with a foreword, by his wife Penelope Buckley, that it 'reveals more about Buckley than all his earlier works and read together with Cutting Green Hay, provides a remarkable picture of the complete Buckley - poet, patriot, husband, father, intellectual and warm, volatile, compassionate individual.'
In 1993 the Vincent Buckley Poetry Prize was instituted in memory of Buckley, and is awarded alternately to Australian and Irish poets.
Australian Poetry Library Author Entry
