Death Of An Author
David Rowbotham: A New Kind Of Introduction
(“…a kind of case study for considering deficiencies in Australian literary criticism in the period since World War II”)
by Stephany Louise Steggall
from a Thesis entitled: “WORTHY OF MY LIFE’S TIME”: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE POETRY OF DAVID ROWBOTHAM IN TERMS OF HIS REASSESSMENT OF HIS CAREER – undertaken for Postgraduate Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in English, University of Queensland, 2000
David Rowbotham (1924-) is a complex and sophisticated Australian writer with an extensive output of poetry, prose-fiction and journalism in a writing career that began just after the war. He is, above all, a poet – and one who has continually attempted to define his situation. As a result, he presents an opportunity to investigate the way a poet redefines himself and his work and reacts to prevailing models of criticism and theory. He has completed this definition in his poetry at various, crucial stages of his career and, since he has had very little assistance from Australian poetry critics and scholars, he can also be regarded as a kind of case study for considering deficiencies in Australian literary criticism in the period since World War 11.
Although he is the subject of a monograph by John Strugnell (Focus on David Rowbotham), published in the University of Queensland Press’s Artists in Queensland series, valuable critical material is limited to Kenneth Slessor, David Malouf, Martin Duwell, James Tulip and Thomas Shapcott, whose appreciation of his development remedies in part the inadequacies of many cruder views of his books. In particular, Malouf’s extensive article in Australian Literary Studies, May 1982, looks closely at his career and puts it in perspective. Malouf uses the poem “Permanent Way” (from the volume The Pen of Feathers) to explore the poet’s sense of his position and purpose:
“‘Permanent Way’… one of Rowbotham’s finest, offers a clue perhaps to how we should see him: he keeps moving, but in the one line, and that line a public and established one. How much can be achieved on the way the poem itself demonstrates. The last lines, which in their tone, but also in their imagery, may have offered a hint to Les Murray, are achieved with great delicacy and discretion. He is speaking of a workman he has seen earlier:
Later, I passed his way again.
He sat in the shade of the rock beside his lunch-box,
And waved a hand, which held a sandwich, in greeting.
I liked him.
There was a humility in him,
And some kind of permanence.
“Without meaning in any way to qualify the generosity of the poet’s tribute by reading it as self-reflection, we might nonetheless recognise in Rowbotham what he praises in the workman. It is a kind of humility and permanence in himself that makes him sensitive to those qualities in the other and leads him to see them both, equally, as workers along the road.
“What is it in David Rowbotham that makes him central to a tradition, and how far has he moved?
“A concern with permanence is certainly one of the characteristics of that tradition, a belief that the best values are quiet, common, even commonplace and that they are best spoken for from the centre rather than the extremes. There is also humility in it: a belief that the poet ought not to claim too much for his own insights and that he should speak sociably, using common language and the middle voice; a belief too that he reflects things, and reflects upon their significance, but does not use or change them.”
David Malouf’s assessment is used in this thesis as a basis for an extended appraisal of Rowbotham, whose work is even more complicated than Malouf realises. But a cue is taken from Malouf’s awareness of Rowbotham’s “concern with permanence” and used to trace the shape of a long writing life.
Rowbotham’s poems number 400 in his books alone, and his reputation is based on a consistent publishing history. National appearance of his poetry began with the Sydney Bulletin in 1946 and the Jindyworobak Anthologies in the late 1940s. He has been published regularly in anthologies of Australian verse through the past five decades and occasionally in overseas publications: conservatively, a total of 200 representations. He has published ten books of poetry and another is due for publication in 2000. He has had recent publication in major Australian newspapers, as well as in The Bulletin and Southerly; which signifies his continuing commitment to his craft despite the poverty of criticism and acknowledgment.
A survey of his representation in major anthologies and literary histories shows, as James Tulip has remarked, that he is a figure “whom fashion has eclipsed and who may be waiting to be rediscovered”. The histories focus briefly on his association with the tradition established at The Bulletin by its Red Page editor and literary critic Douglas Stewart and include him in lists of those who continue to produce significant work since the 1960s rather than in according independent recognition. Thomas W. Riggs’ Contemporary Poets (1996) and The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature (1994) provide synopses of his work and status.
Rowbotham’s poems appear in several important anthologies of the 1990s: Phillip Neilsen and Helen Horton, Jennifer Strauss, Kevin Hart, Thomas Shapcott, and Peter Porter. Significantly, he is well represented in those anthologies edited by Les Murray. Contrary to this, he is not published in anthologies edited by Vincent Buckley, John Leonard, Robert Gray and Geoffrey Lehmann, and John Tranter and Philip Mead; these were mainstream anthologies of the 1990s. Nor does his name appear in anthologies edited by Rodney Hall, Chris Wallace-Crabbe, and Harry Heseltine in the 1980s.
The accumulated material on individual authors is not always proportionate to the volume or veracity of their writing. The ALS Cumulative Guide to Australian Literature edited by L.T. Hergenhan reflects fashions in criticism: the worth of the lower profile writer is subordinate to the acceptance of those writers with an established international reputation. The merit of a rich and rewarding poet like David Rowbotham can lapse. Such a poet can become an unfashionable, non-canonical writer. Thus the “death” of an author occurs: implicit in the veil of forgetfulness that descends over the less popular poet, in the denial of individual performance, and in disregard of the poet’s right to a detailed sensitive reading of his work over time.
This thesis seeks to redress the omission of Rowbotham from the list of Australian writers whose critical reception has supported their continuing engagement with poetry. A considered analytic statement of the poet’s complete works is made, laying the emphasis on primary texts rather than advanced literary theory. Access to some personal correspondence has assisted the research. Reference is also made to Rowbotham’s journalistic output as Arts and Literary Editor, later Literary Editor and Theatre Critic for the Brisbane Courier-Mail for seventeen years. A comprehensive profile of the poet and his work is available on the World Wide Web. The National Library of Australia, which lists details on its Internet site, holds most significant papers – correspondence with fellow writers, drafts of published and unpublished works, articles and lectures – in its Manuscript Section.
In the absence of adequate critical material, questions such as the poet’s cast of mind and his relationship to the reader are derived from his books of published verse in chronological order. A point of reference is also made to the poem “The Pen of Feathers” (from The Pen of Feathers).
Most, I didn’t presume, and never do,
Though I write this for possible future view,
That you or the world would necessarily come
To deem my work worthy of my life’s time
Or worth the span of breath I put to it;
But compulsion in my pen of feathers set
The travelling station of the seeker’s role.
You, if you find me, have also been my goal.
This poem expresses something of the poet’s awareness of being overlooked or underestimated. It warrants reading again. It is an important poem that highlights Rowbotham’s endeavour to monitor his own development and his attempt to understand himself.
A preoccupation with his identity as poet and person dominates the verse, which moves away from poetry of place to broader perspectives, yet returns to the poet’s primary origins. The influence of his war experiences and later his extensive travels in the 1970s and 1980s often directs his voice. But apart from his earliest work he is not a follower of particular schools of fashion. His is “an individual flight” (The Pen of Feathers) or, to use a common refrain in his poetry, the life work of a “survivor”.
Of the postwar generation of returned servicemen, including David Campbell and Francis Webb, who started publishing verse, David Rowbotham at 75 is the only one still alive and practising. It is time to restore his poetry and gain a better understanding of his considerable contribution to Australian literature by investigating the poems themselves, and the nugatory – the trivial, the invalid – critical response, and his own developing sense of the shape of his career.
*Published on the Internet with the permission of the author, Stephany Louise Steggall, July 24, 2000.