Bernard O'Dowd Biography

Australian poet, born in Beaufort, Victoria, educated at the University of Melbourne. He was Assistant Librarian at the Supreme Court in Melbourne from 1887 to 1913 and became State Parliamentary Draughtsman in 1931. Much influenced by Walt Whitman, with whom he corresponded, in his visionary concern for the development of his country, O'Dowd's hopes and anxieties for Australia were central to Dawnward? (1903), his first collection of verse. The Bush (1912), generally considered his finest achievement as a poet, foresaw the future of Australia in terms of its equivalence to Greece and Rome in the classical era. Among his other collections of poetry are the mystically speculative The Silent Land (1906), Dominions of the Boundary (1907), and the sexually candid Alma Venus! (1921). Collected Poems appeared in 1944. His other publications include Poetry Militant: an Australian Plea for the Poetry of Purpose (1909), an exposition of his socialist conceptions of the functions of verse.