To Be a Poet in Australia single work   poetry   "is to live in Echo Valley"
Issue Details: First known date: 1986... 1986 To Be a Poet in Australia
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Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Towards Sunrise : Poems, 1979-1986 Bruce Dawe , Melbourne : Longman Cheshire , 1986 Z366906 1986 selected work poetry satire Melbourne : Longman Cheshire , 1986 pg. 65
  • 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. 200
  • 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. 186
  • 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. 232-3
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Works about this Work

Poetry and Politics : In Conflict or Conversation? Aboriginal Poetry, Peter Skrzynecki, and Bruce Dawe Bernadette Brennan , 2002 single work criticism
— Appears in: Sydney Studies in English , vol. 28 no. 2002; (p. 103-123) 'At first blush it may appear that poetry, a seemingly private language of lyric or personal experience, would have at best a very tenuous relationship with the public reality of the political. Indeed those who argue that art should be produced for art's sake, free from the tyranny of meaning and purpose, would insist that poetry and the political must operate in separate spheres. But what exactly does the term 'political' mean? 'Political' refers to the way a society organises its social life and the power relations which that organisation involves. Poetry which deals with the nature of relationships, language, history, existence, oppression, and death is, therefore, political. The relationship between poetry and the political is, however, more subtle and more profound than this neat equation suggests. In this paper readings of poems by a number of Aboriginal poets, by Peter Skrzynecki, and by Bruce Dawe, seek to uncover ways in which individual poems can offer a deeper understanding of some of the moral and political questions facing contemporary Australian society: black / white relations, asylum seekers, unemployment, and globalisation.' (Author's abstract)
The Bridled Pegaroo, or, Is there a Colonial Poetics of Intertextuality Horst Priessnitz , 1991 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , vol. 15 no. 2 1991; (p. 14-31)
Poetry and Politics : In Conflict or Conversation? Aboriginal Poetry, Peter Skrzynecki, and Bruce Dawe Bernadette Brennan , 2002 single work criticism
— Appears in: Sydney Studies in English , vol. 28 no. 2002; (p. 103-123) 'At first blush it may appear that poetry, a seemingly private language of lyric or personal experience, would have at best a very tenuous relationship with the public reality of the political. Indeed those who argue that art should be produced for art's sake, free from the tyranny of meaning and purpose, would insist that poetry and the political must operate in separate spheres. But what exactly does the term 'political' mean? 'Political' refers to the way a society organises its social life and the power relations which that organisation involves. Poetry which deals with the nature of relationships, language, history, existence, oppression, and death is, therefore, political. The relationship between poetry and the political is, however, more subtle and more profound than this neat equation suggests. In this paper readings of poems by a number of Aboriginal poets, by Peter Skrzynecki, and by Bruce Dawe, seek to uncover ways in which individual poems can offer a deeper understanding of some of the moral and political questions facing contemporary Australian society: black / white relations, asylum seekers, unemployment, and globalisation.' (Author's abstract)
The Bridled Pegaroo, or, Is there a Colonial Poetics of Intertextuality Horst Priessnitz , 1991 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , vol. 15 no. 2 1991; (p. 14-31)
VIEW ALL WORKS ABOUT (2)
Last amended 5 Feb 2013 14:03:43
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