A clever, self taught American writer recently asked me who I regarded as the greatest Australian underground poet of all time. Who was i to offer my bullshit opinion?- but I was quick off the mark: Michael Dransfield (1948-1973).
After Dransfeld left his privileged private school life behind he roamed the back streets of Sydney. He became a celebrated poet and drug addict and reportedly died of ‘acute broncho-pneumonia and brain damage’. He was only twenty-four years old. Dransfield left a legacy of close to one thousand poems.
As a starting point a net sampling of Dransfield’s extraordinary work can be found here: http://www.sweatywheels.com/Dransfield/Poetry.html
‘Shit’, ‘Endsight’, ‘Jazz Baby’, ‘Fix’, ‘Overdose’: it is life as viewed from the margins but it is still highly accessible stuff. Tough first person narrative poems. Without a parachute. Knifed reality.
If you are interested in reading a highly readable scholarly study of Dransfield’s work have a look at Louis Armard’s article, ‘STILL LIFE WITH HYPODERMIC: MICHAEL DRANSFIELD AND THE POETRY OF ADDICTION.’
http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http://www.geocities.com/louis_armand/dransfield.html&date=2009-10-26+01:57:25
Also check out Derek Motion's valiant attempt to make some sense of Dransfield's work in his article 'Michael Dransfield's Innocent Eyes' (2007) in his Cordite Poetry Review article:
Also check out Derek Motion's valiant attempt to make some sense of Dransfield's work in his article 'Michael Dransfield's Innocent Eyes' (2007) in his Cordite Poetry Review article:
According to Amazon.com a Collected Poems copy is now worth close to $150 (AUS). Buy it here:
UPDATE 3 September 2011: The Australian Poetry Library has recently put an amazing 398 of Dransfield’s poems on their massive Australian poetry site for free. Check it out here: http://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/dransfield-michael
