Michael Dransfield - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Michael Dransfield was an Australian poet active in the 1960s and early 1970s who wrote close to 1000 poems. He has been described as "one of the most widely read poets of his generation."

Early life

Dransfield was born in Sydney

Sydney

Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...

, and educated at Sydney Grammar School

Sydney Grammar School

Sydney Grammar School is an independent, non-denominational, selective, day school for boys, located in Darlinghurst, Edgecliff and St Ives, all suburbs of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia....

. He briefly studied English literature and language at the University of New South Wales

University of New South Wales

The University of New South Wales , is a research-focused university based in Kensington, a suburb in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia...

and Sydney University before dropping out. He worked for some months as a clerk at the Australian Taxation Office

Australian Taxation Office

The Australian Taxation Office is an Australian Government statutory agency and the principal revenue collection body for the Australian Government. The ATO has responsibility for administering the Australian federal taxation system and superannuation legislation...

before drifting into the counter-culture. From then on he worked intermittently, living mainly in Paddington

Paddington, New South Wales

Paddington is an inner-city, eastern suburb of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Paddington is located 3 kilometres east of the Sydney central business district and lies across the local government areas of the City of Sydney and the Municipality of Woollahra...

, Balmain

Balmain, New South Wales

Balmain is a suburb in the inner-west of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Balmain is located slightly west of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of the Municipality of Leichhardt....

, and Darlinghurst

Darlinghurst, New South Wales

Darlinghurst is an inner-city, eastern suburb of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Darlinghurst is located immediately east of the Sydney central business district and Hyde Park, within the local government area of the City of Sydney...

in Sydney, and in the north coast town of Casino

Casino, New South Wales

Casino is a town in the Northern Rivers area of New South Wales, Australia, with a population of 9,400 people . It lies on the banks of the Richmond River and is situated at the junction of the Bruxner Highway and the Summerland Way....

, and he travelled frequently between Tasmania

Tasmania

Tasmania is an Australian island and state. It is south of the continent, separated by Bass Strait. The state includes the island of Tasmania—the 26th largest island in the world—and the surrounding islands. The state has a population of 507,626 , of whom almost half reside in the greater Hobart...

and Queensland

Queensland

Queensland is a state of Australia, occupying the north-eastern section of the mainland continent. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, south-west and south respectively. To the east, Queensland is bordered by the Coral Sea and Pacific Ocean...

, visiting his large group of friends and fellow poets.

Poetry

Dransfield wrote his first poem at the age of eight and began to write regularly at fourteen. He was a prolific poet, writing lyrical poems, which as his career progressed came to focus more and more on drug experiences. His poetry was first published in the mid-1960s.

Dransfield's poems were published in Meanjin
Meanjin
Meanjin is an Australian literary journal. The name - pronounced Mee-AN-jin - is derived from an Aboriginal word for the land where the city Brisbane is located.It was founded in December 1940, in Brisbane, by Clem Christesen...

, Southerly
Southerly
Southerly is the name of a storm or front of air coming from the south. In the Southern Hemisphere these can be cold and have bad weather. In Wellington, New Zealand these storms are normally short and frequently have winds gusting between 120 km/h and 160 km/h though higher speeds are...

, Poetry Australia and Poetry
Poetry (magazine)
Poetry , published in Chicago, Illinois since 1912, is one of the leading monthly poetry journals in the English-speaking world. Published by the Poetry Foundation and currently edited by Christian Wiman, the magazine has a circulation of 30,000 and prints 300 poems per year out of approximately...

magazine. His first published collection was Streets of the Long Voyage. He published two more books, including Drug poems (Sun Books, 1972).

Between 1967 and 1969, Dransfield corresponded and exchanged poems with Peter Kocan

Peter Kocan

Peter Raymond Kocan , Australian author and poet, is remembered in Australia for his attempt to assassinate federal Opposition Leader Arthur Calwell in 1966.-Life and career:...

, who had been imprisoned for attempting to assassinate federal opposition leader Arthur Calwell

Arthur Calwell

Arthur Augustus Calwell Australian politician, was a member of the Australian House of Representatives for 32 years from 1940 to 1972, Immigration Minister in the government of Ben Chifley from 1945 to 1949 and Leader of the Australian Labor Party from 1960 to 1967.-Early life:Calwell was born in...

, and who was then a patient at the Morisset Mental Hospital. The letters comprise drafts of poems by Dransfield, quotes of poems by other poets, and recommendations for books Kocan should read.

Themes

Dransfield's poems address "people marginalized by society" "the relationship of the creative self to the outside world" "personal identity, the family, the relationship between human beings and the natural world, poetry itself, and states of mind"

Death

In his early twenties Dransfield was plagued by ill health. He died at the Mater Misericordiae Hospital, Sydney, on 20 April 1973, aged 24, leaving behind close to a thousand poems. Sources report conflicting causes of death, including that he died of a heroin overdose, infection related to drug use and a report that the coroner's finding on the cause of death was "acute broncho-pneumonia and brain damage".

Legacy

Rodney Hall

-Biography:Born in Solihull, Warwickshire, England, Hall came to Australia as a child after World War II and studied at the University of Queensland . In the 1960s Hall began working as a freelance writer, and a book and film reviewer. He also worked as an actor, and was often engaged by the...

, who as poetry editor of The Australian
The Australian
The Australian is a broadsheet newspaper published in Australia from Monday to Saturday each week since 14 July 1964. The editor in chief is Chris Mitchell, the editor is Clive Mathieson and the 'editor-at-large' is Paul Kelly....

newspaper had been among the first to publish Dransfield's poetry, edited and posthumously published several collections of Dransfield's poetry during the late 1970s and early 1980s, including Collected Poems (UQP, 1987). In 2011 a poet character called "Michael" (evidently based on Dransfield) was featured in the second part of the ABC telemovie Paper Giants: The Birth of Cleo
Paper Giants: The Birth of Cleo
Paper Giants: The Birth of Cleo is a 2011 Australian two part television miniseries about the beginning of Cleo magazine and its creator, Ita Buttrose...

.

External links

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