June is the final month for entries in The Bruce Dawe National Poetry Prize 2013, administered by the University of Southern Queensland. So for our June collection spotlight, biographer Stephany Steggall explores Fryer's Bruce Dawe papers...

I began my biography of Bruce Dawe (Bruce Dawe: Life Cycle 2009) with a poem, 'Kid Stuff'. This poem is classic Dawe: direct, challenging, and personal. The original typescript - '2 leaves with handwritten emendations and 2 leaves handwritten' - is kept in Fryer Library's large and well-ordered Collection of Dawe's Papers: UQFL111, Series B: Literary Manuscripts. The series comprises almost 600 typescript and handwritten poems, published and unpublished.

Dawe would have written most of these sitting at the dining room table or somewhere equally casual. He disliked the oppression of an office, imagining that the walls were saying, 'OK, now you're here, let's have it!' Once he scribbled a few lines on the white tablecloth of a Melbourne restaurant, much to the manager's indignation!

Most of us associate Dawe with the protest poem or the statement about a social justice issue. The Fryer Library has many of the originals, like 'The Wholly Innocent'. I have always been disappointed that somewhere along the way a draft of the well-known 'Drifters' did not make it to the library. Dawe can't remember now where or why he wrote that poem. I have not seen a draft of 'Life-Cycle' either, the title poem for my book; however, a companion piece, 'Old Full-Backs' is in the Fryer Collection.

Despite his rugged exterior and his assertion that he didn't write 'hearts and flowers stuff', Dawe has written deeply felt 'love' poems. Who could read 'For Eileen' (1 leaf typescript), 'To Katrina' (1 leaf handwritten, some corrections,) or 'All that you ever did was love me' (1 leaf handwritten, in section of Untitled Poems) without entering into the pain of the writer? Reading them in a handwritten draft is particularly poignant.

Image: Bruce Dawe by Sven Roehrs, Fryer Library, University of Queensland Library. By kind permission of the artist.

Naturally we connect poetry with the name of Dawe, but the Fryer Collection includes much more, like his literary and personal correspondence. For many researchers the words of John Henry Newman hold true: 'A man's life lies in his letters. They are the most accurate form of biography.' I can't claim to have read many particularly revealing letters in the Fryer Collection, although letters are generally a good guide to dates, names and events. Dawe's more confidential correspondence was with Philip Martin, kept at the Australian Defence Force Academy Library, Canberra. In all of my biographical research I am amazed at just how personal some of the letters are and wonder at the sender or recipient putting them in a library. Sometimes there are restrictions placed on these files.

If you have a chance to read just one Dawe item in the Fryer Collection, I recommend his signature poem, 'Sometimes Gladness'. You will find it in UQFL111, Appendix 5 of the Poetry in Series B, Literary Manuscripts:

'…Down the aisle / come all my years, none altogether miserable, none / without the saving grace of some mistake that bent me / in the sly shape I recognise…'

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Stephany Steggall is a University of Queensland graduate and the current recipient of the The Hazel Rowley Literary Fellowship. Her published works include: Can I call you Colin? : the authorised biography of Colin Thiele (2004); The loved and the lost : the life of Ivan Southall (2006) and Bruce Dawe : life cycle (2009). Copies of the latter are available by contacting the author.