A significant Australian who taught at Downlands College, poet Bruce Dawe

Donald Bruce Dawe AO (15 February 1930 – 1 April 2020) was an Australian poet and academic. Some critics consider him one of the most influential Australian poets of all time. Dawe received numerous poetry awards in Australia and was named an Officer of the Order of Australia. He taught literature in universities for over 30 years. Dawe's poetry collection, Sometimes Gladness, sold over 100,000 copies in several printings.

Bruce Dawe was born in 1930 in Fitzroy, Victoria   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). In 1966, Dawe was posted to Malaysia for six months.

Leaving the RAAF in 1968, Dawe began teaching at Downlands College, a Catholic boys college in Toowoomba, Queensland.

After teaching English and history at the secondary level for two and a half years, he became a tertiary lecturer in English literature at the Darling Downs Institute of Advanced Education (DDIAE) in Toowoomba.

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.

Dawe died in Caloundra, Queensland, on 1 April 2020, at age 90.

He was invited by the editor of Compass Theology Review in 1981 to contribute a reflection on his image of God. He declined to write but sent a poem instead. (And the editor thought he might find a place in a footnote that he was Dear Father…..). You might enjoy the poem.

MY EXPERIENCE OF GOD

Dear Father, I’m afraid I’m going to have to pass

on your kind invitation to write an article on my experience

of God (which is, for me, like being asked to write about

what it’s like to be good at maths or the world best

ocarina-player). Please don’t get me wrong

- I value the compliment, as I would an invite

to a friend’s wedding in Darjeeling,

or to see the sunrise over the Vale of Chamouni

– but these, too, are great things that never happened.

For years now I have sat around waiting for just such

a religious experience as you propose – even pretending disinterest,

affecting agnosticism as a further bait and lure

to the real happening; I have tried sin in a

modestly Augustinian way, practised humility

until I just about had it off perfect, felt the soft nap

of mortality as housewives in a haberdasher’s shop

finger gently the proferred velour, noted, here at the end carnal edge

of night, the meteor-showers of goodness

pelting the ozone layer of the world’s evil,

and the Christ of a thousand flags

enter the box-canyon knowing there is no way out but out,

and being immeasurably cheered by the perpetual recurrence

of the performance…

But – you know how it is with some people

- when one special thing comes along

they are out of town for the day and the vision of the godhead

goes to the bloke next door 

- or they’re striking a match and the Burning Bush

and its voice of election

finds a better witness in Moses…