Life-Cycle single work   poetry   satire   "When children are born in Victoria"
Issue Details: First known date: 1967... 1967 Life-Cycle
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Notes

  • Dedication: For Big Jim Phelan.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Notes:

This first publication includes a stanza not found in subsequent publications: 'And the passion that sleeps too deep for the world's rhetoric, / for embroilment in wars, the wit that despises / the tricky bounce of involvement, preferring the balk and blind turn /Out of trouble...'

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Australian Poetry 1968 Dorothy Auchterlonie (editor), Sydney : Angus and Robertson , 1968 Z257546 1968 anthology poetry Sydney : Angus and Robertson , 1968 pg. 19-20
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon An Eye for a Tooth : Poems Bruce Dawe , Melbourne : Cheshire , 1968 Z547251 1968 selected work poetry Melbourne : Cheshire , 1968 pg. 42-43
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Condolences of the Season : Selected Poems Bruce Dawe , Melbourne : Longman Cheshire , 1971 Z546924 1971 selected work poetry Melbourne : Longman Cheshire , 1971 pg. 66-67
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Twelve Poets, 1950-1970 12 Poets, 1950-1970 Alexander Craig (editor), Milton : Jacaranda Press , 1971 Z77157 1971 anthology poetry Milton : Jacaranda Press , 1971 pg. 114-115
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon The Penguin Book of Australian Verse Harry Payne Heseltine (editor), Ringwood Harmondsworth : Penguin , 1972 Z334403 1972 anthology poetry Selection of works by Australian poets from Charles Harpur (1813-1868) to Charles Buckmaster (b. 1951). Ringwood Harmondsworth : Penguin , 1972 pg. 389-390
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    y separately published work icon Australian Voices : A Collection of Poetry and Pictures Edward Kynaston (editor), Ringwood : Penguin , 1974 Z477268 1974 anthology poetry Ringwood : Penguin , 1974 pg. 100-101
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Sometimes Gladness : Collected Poems 1954-1978 Bruce Dawe , Melbourne : Longman Cheshire , 1978 Z543663 1978 selected work poetry

    'The sixth edition of Sometimes Gladness includes three indexes to enable readers to find suitable texts. In addition to an alphabetical index, poems are also grouped according to form, and categorised by themes such as war, family, images or dreams.'

    Melbourne : Longman Cheshire , 1978
    pg. 180-181
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon The Penguin Book of Australian Humorous Verse Bill Scott , Ringwood : Penguin , 1984 Z408517 1984 anthology poetry humour Ringwood : Penguin , 1984 pg. 87-88
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon The Illustrated Treasury of Australian Verse Beatrice Davis , Melbourne : Nelson , 1984 Z315151 1984 anthology poetry biography Melbourne : Nelson , 1984 pg. 239-240
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    y separately published work icon Cross-Country : A Book of Australian Verse John Barnes (editor), Brian McFarlane (editor), Richmond : Heinemann , 1984 Z900285 1984 anthology poetry (taught in 1 units) Richmond : Heinemann , 1984 pg. 192-193
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon My Country : Australian Poetry and Short Stories, Two Hundred Years Leonie Kramer (editor), Sydney : Lansdowne , 1985 Z1067493 1985 anthology poetry short story Sydney : Lansdowne , 1985 pg. 622-623
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    y separately published work icon Anthology of Australian Religious Poetry Les Murray (editor), Blackburn : Collins Dove , 1986 Z212505 1986 anthology poetry Blackburn : Collins Dove , 1986 pg. 46-47
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    y separately published work icon Two Centuries of Australian Poetry Mark O'Connor (editor), Melbourne : Oxford University Press , 1988 Z322247 1988 anthology poetry criticism Contains poems grouped into 18 thematic sections (19 in 2nd. ed.) ; each section has an introduction, notes and suggestions for study activities and further study. Biographical notes on authors and indexes also included. Melbourne : Oxford University Press , 1988 pg. 52-53
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Sometimes Gladness : Collected Poems 1954-1987 Bruce Dawe , Melbourne : Longman Cheshire , 1988 Z898040 1988 selected work poetry Melbourne : Longman Cheshire , 1988 pg. 81-82
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Cross-Country : A Book of Australian Verse John Barnes (editor), Brian McFarlane (editor), Richmond : Heinemann , 1984 Z900285 1984 anthology poetry (taught in 1 units) Richmond : Heinemann Education Australia , 1988 pg. 192-193
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    y separately published work icon An Anthology of Commonwealth Poetry C. D. Narasimhaiah (editor), Chennai : Macmillan , 1990 Z1176727 1990 anthology poetry Chennai : Macmillan , 1990 pg. 99-101
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Sometimes Gladness : Collected Poems, 1954-1992 Bruce Dawe , Melbourne : Longman Cheshire , 1993 Z470171 1993 selected work poetry humour satire Melbourne : Longman Cheshire , 1993 pg. 76-77
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon The Sting in the Wattle : Australian Satirical Verse Philip Neilsen (editor), St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1993 Z375066 1993 anthology poetry correspondence extract satire humour war literature St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1993 pg. 138-139
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon The Illustrated Treasury of Australian Verse Beatrice Davis , Melbourne : Nelson , 1984 Z315151 1984 anthology poetry biography Sydney : State Library of New South Wales Press , 1996 pg. 239-240
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon The Arnold Anthology of Post-Colonial Literatures in English John Thieme (editor), London : Arnold , 1996 Z818232 1996 selected work extract poetry short story London : Arnold , 1996 pg. 229-230
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon 100 Australian Poems You Need to Know Jamie Grant (editor), Prahran : Hardie Grant Books , 2008 Z1545298 2008 anthology poetry Prahran : Hardie Grant Books , 2008 pg. 162-163
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Bruce Dawe : Life Cycle Stephany Steggall , Port Adelaide : Ginninderra Press , 2009 Z1627487 2009 single work biography

    'Bruce Dawe: Life Cycle acknowledges one of Australia's best known poets and one of his best known poems. His life cycles have been poverty, perseverance and personal happiness; the rhythms of his being are the rhythms of his poetry - persistently fearless in speaking out on social and political issues; consistently sensitive and lyrical about painful concerns; insistently witty and satirical on just about anything. His range of poetry resists wrong and reveals a great love of his fellow man and a deep understanding of life. This biography is the first time that Dawe's life has been interpreted in full through his poetry, and the poems take on new significance when read in this context. The subject is telling some of the story in his own words - in poems.

    Sometimes Gladness is Dawe's signature title and a best-seller of about 130,000 copies. Now in it's sixth edition, the book expresses a life long attempt to understand the balance between gladness and grief, the common factors of human experience. Verse cartooning and satirical humour, the constants of more than fifty years of writing, are much admired and enjoyed by readers and listeners of all ages. Dawe, one of Australia's first and most successful performance poets, provides imaginative scope to fill the spaces between humour and the pathos.

    The reader of Bruce Dawe: Life Cycle shares a large experience, which effectively starts with 'Strictly En Passant', the first poem in the first book, No Fixed Address. Dawe looks forward to the multiplicity of 'feel and fragrance, sound and sheen' that his life will hold and he anticipates that, while he may not fully understand yet the meaning of a satisfactory existence, 'Time may build on this...' the existence culminates in 'Autobiography', in which Dawe measures what has been built. He says that he 'wouldn't have missed for anything' the experience of his life.' (Publisher's blurb)

    Port Adelaide : Ginninderra Press , 2009
    pg. 155-6
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Love Is Strong as Death Paul Kelly (editor), Melbourne : Hamish Hamilton , 2019 17491295 2019 anthology poetry

    'Paul Kelly’s songs are steeped in poetry. And now he has gathered from around the world the poems he loves – poems that have inspired and challenged him over the years, a number of which he has set to music. This wide-ranging and deeply moving anthology combines the ancient and the modern, the hallowed and the profane, the famous and the little known, to speak to two of literature’s great themes that have proven so powerful in his music: love and death – plus everything in between.

    'Here are poems by Yehuda Amichai, W.H. Auden, Tusiata Avia, Hera Lindsay Bird, William Blake, Bertolt Brecht, Constantine Cavafy, Alison Croggon, Mahmoud Darwish, Emily Dickinson, John Donne, Ali Cobby Eckermann, James Fenton, Thomas Hardy, Kevin Hart, Gwen Harwood, Seamus Heaney, Philip Hodgins, Homer, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Langston Hughes, John Keats, Ono No Komachi, Maxine Kumin, Philip Larkin, Li-Young Lee, Norman MacCaig, Paula Meehan, Czeslaw Milosz, Les Murray, Pablo Neruda, Sharon Olds, Ovid, Sylvia Plath, Dorothy Porter, Rumi, Anne Sexton, William Shakespeare, Izumi Shikibu, Warsan Shire, Kenneth Slessor, Wislawa Szymborska, Máire Mhac an tSaoi, Ko Un, Walt Whitman, Judith Wright, W.B. Yeats and many more.'

    Source: Publisher's blurb.

    Melbourne : Hamish Hamilton , 2019

Works about this Work

A Poetics of Sacred and Secular in Australia Lyn McCredden , 2020 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 20 no. 2 2020;

'This essay examines the claims to secularity of contemporary Australia, arguing that in the context of Indigenous Australians' declaration, in the document 'Uluru: Statement from the Heart', and of many poetic expressions, we must more fully explore the category of the sacred. Further, the essay argues that in contemporary Australia, sacred and secular domains need to be mutually engaged. The essay offers the idea of the poetic sacred - where secular (political, earthed, civic) and sacred (numinous, transcendent, meaning-making) possibilities can be seen in dialogue. 'Uluru: Statement from the Heart', as well as the poetry of Bruce Dawe, Les Murray, Lionel Fogarty and Judith Beveridge are examined, as exemplars of the poetic sacred.' (Publication abstract)

Making an Ocean of a River: Reading Australian Poems on Sport Ameena K. Ansari , 2006 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australia and India : Interconnections : Identity, Representation, Belonging 2006; (p. 238-248)
Much More Could You Say : Bruce Dawe's Poetry Noel Rowe , 1998-1999 single work criticism
— Appears in: Sydney Studies in English , vol. 24 no. 1998-1999; (p. 102-117)
'Bruce Dawe's reputation as a vernacular poet can be a disadvantage. I once heard an eminent Australian critic remark that once you'd read his poems there wasn't much more you could say. The implication was that his work had an immediate appeal but no depth and that to exercise one's critical faculties on work so colloquial in pitch and perspective would be a waste of a well-trained mind. At the same time I encountered the poetry of Philip Martin. Martin is a writer Dawe acknowledges as his friend and mentor, yet Martin's poetry seems at first very different: the accent is more cultivated and the focus more personal. There is, however, at least one important similarity: both practise 'the art that conceals art', exercising great control of rhythm and speech stress to create an apparently uncomplicated voice. It is only when you do read their poems — that is, read within rather than over their poems — that you find there is much more you could say.' (Author's abstract)
Poetry in Motion John Harms , Ian Jobling , 1997 single work criticism biography
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 13-14 September 1997; (p. rev 26)
y separately published work icon A Study Guide to Bruce Dawe's Sometimes Gladness Kilian McNamara , Ballarat : Wizard Books , 1996 Z516198 1996 single work biography criticism
Making an Ocean of a River: Reading Australian Poems on Sport Ameena K. Ansari , 2006 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australia and India : Interconnections : Identity, Representation, Belonging 2006; (p. 238-248)
Much More Could You Say : Bruce Dawe's Poetry Noel Rowe , 1998-1999 single work criticism
— Appears in: Sydney Studies in English , vol. 24 no. 1998-1999; (p. 102-117)
'Bruce Dawe's reputation as a vernacular poet can be a disadvantage. I once heard an eminent Australian critic remark that once you'd read his poems there wasn't much more you could say. The implication was that his work had an immediate appeal but no depth and that to exercise one's critical faculties on work so colloquial in pitch and perspective would be a waste of a well-trained mind. At the same time I encountered the poetry of Philip Martin. Martin is a writer Dawe acknowledges as his friend and mentor, yet Martin's poetry seems at first very different: the accent is more cultivated and the focus more personal. There is, however, at least one important similarity: both practise 'the art that conceals art', exercising great control of rhythm and speech stress to create an apparently uncomplicated voice. It is only when you do read their poems — that is, read within rather than over their poems — that you find there is much more you could say.' (Author's abstract)
Bruce Dawe Dagmar Strauss (interviewer), 1990 single work interview
— Appears in: Facing Writers : Australia's Leading Writers Talk with Dagmar Strauss 1990; (p. 79-92)
Reticent Desire: The Poetry of Bruce Dawe Noel Rowe , 1992 single work criticism biography
— Appears in: Outrider : A Journal of Multicultural Literature in Australia , June vol. 9 no. 1-2 1992; (p. 82-97)
Poetry in Motion John Harms , Ian Jobling , 1997 single work criticism biography
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 13-14 September 1997; (p. rev 26)
Last amended 29 Jun 2023 11:38:01
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