Vale Rosemary Dobson and Peter Steele
AustLit is deeply saddened by the deaths on 27 June of two eminent Australian poets – Rosemary Dobson (1920-2012) and Peter Steele (1939-2012).
A requiem mass and funeral for the Reverend Emeritus Professor Peter Steele will be held in the chapel of Newman College, University of Melbourne on Monday, 2 July at 1.00 pm. Rosemary Dobson’s funeral will take place at St Paul’s Anglican Church, Manuka, ACT on Wednesday 4 July at 11.30 am.
Eulogies and obituaries for Dobson and Steele are already appearing in a range of media outlets. Suffice it here to record some of their own words:
Out of darkness I ask for solace
The clean, the truthful lines of winter:
And Time has shaken my mind, reaping
The fruit of pain, the fruit of grieving.
...
Bare tree, bare mind swept clean of anguish
Accept simplicities, be patient,
Await the bird in the bough, the tremor
Of life in the veins, another springtime.
Rosemary Dobson, from ‘Out of Winter’, Bulletin, 15 December 1954
It is said, here, that ‘The honours line up and grab
their candidates,’ at which we inspect our blotched competitor or mirror image:
worse, it is asked, ‘What do you feel like
when you close up the wall between you and the future?’
Barley begins to grow when broken.
Peter Steele, from ‘The Vigil’, Invisible Riders, 1999
AustLit invites friends and colleagues of Dobson and Steele to share their thoughts and memories via the ‘Add a Comment’ function on AustLit’s News Blog.