David Gordon Brooks (born 12 January 1953 in Canberra) is an

Australian Australian(s) may refer to: Australia * Australia, a country * Australians, citizens of the Commonwealth of Australia ** European Australians ** Anglo-Celtic Australians, Australians descended principally from British colonists ** Aboriginal A ...

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems ( oral or wri ...

novelist A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living writing novels and other fiction, while others asp ...

, short-fiction writer and

essayist An essay is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a letter, a paper, an article, a pamphlet, and a short story. Essays have been sub-classified as formal ...

. He is the author of four published novels, four collections of short stories and five collections of poetry, and his work has won or been shortlisted for major prizes. Brooks is a highly intellectual writer, and his fiction has drawn frequent comparison with the writers

Italo Calvino Italo Calvino (, also , ;. RAI (circa 1970), retrieved 25 October 2012. 15 October 1923 – 19 September 1985) was an Italian writer and journalist. His best known works include the '' Our Ancestors'' trilogy (1952–1959), the ''Cosmicomi ...

and

Jorge Luis Borges Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo (; ; 24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, as well as a key figure in Spanish-language and international literature. His best-known b ...

. He studied poetics at the

Australian National University The Australian National University (ANU) is a public research university located in Canberra, the capital of Australia. Its main campus in Acton encompasses seven teaching and research colleges, in addition to several national academies an ...

(ANU) and in

Toronto, Canada Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...

, from 1971 to 1986. He has been a hand-press printer of high-quality works, and was an editor of the Australian poetry journals ''New Poetry'', ''Helix'' and ''Southerly''. He taught literature at several Australian universities, followed by the Creative Writing program at Sydney University from 1999 to 2013. He is a long-term

vegan Veganism is the practice of abstaining from the use of animal product—particularly in diet—and an associated philosophy that rejects the commodity status of animals. An individual who follows the diet or philosophy is known as a vegan. ...

,
condensed version
/ref> and writes extensively for and about animals and animal suffering.

Early life

Brooks was born in 1953 to H. Gordon Brooks and Norma Brooks (née Jeffrey) in Canberra. In late 1954 his father, a public servant in the Department of Foreign Affairs, was posted to

Athens Athens ( ; el, Αθήνα, Athína ; grc, Ἀθῆναι, Athênai (pl.) ) is both the capital and largest city of Greece. With a population close to four million, it is also the seventh largest city in the European Union. Athens dominates ...

as an immigration attaché, and Brooks' early childhood was spent in

Greece Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders ...

and

Yugoslavia Yugoslavia (; sh-Latn-Cyrl, separator=" / ", Jugoslavija, Југославија ; sl, Jugoslavija ; mk, Југославија ;; rup, Iugoslavia; hu, Jugoszlávia; rue, label=Pannonian Rusyn, Югославия, translit=Juhoslavija ...

, where his father served in 1958. Upon the family's return to Australia Brooks attended Turner Infants, Turner Primary and Canberra High schools. His last year of high school was spent in

Cleveland Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

, on an American Field Service scholarship. Before leaving, he experienced an illness which kept him bed-bound for two months, a period he spent in intense reading of Sartre, de Beauvoir, Camus, James Joyce and others who were formative to his writing life. From 1971-75 Brooks attended the

, where his teachers included R.F. Brissenden and

A.D. Hope Alec Derwent Hope (21 July 190713 July 2000) was an Australian poet and essayist known for his satirical slant. He was also a critic, teacher and academic. He was referred to in an American journal as "the 20th century's greatest 18th-century ...

. Hope and Brissenden would subsequently become friends, whose poetry Brooks would later edit. Amongst his fellow students were Alan Gould, Kevin Hart, Philip Mead and other poets of what is sometimes referred to as 'the Canberra school'. With Gould, Brooks founded the Open Door Press, the publications of which were all hand-set and printed by hand-press. Brooks married Alison Summers in 1975 and together they moved to

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

to pursue postgraduate work at the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public university, public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park (Toronto), Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 ...

. While in Canada, writing his PhD on the poetics of Pound's early cantos, he served as overseas editor for New Poetry and as a scout for the Literature Board of the Australia Council, helping to arrange Australian residencies for

Michael Ondaatje Philip Michael Ondaatje (; born 12 September 1943) is a Sri Lankan-born Canadian poet, fiction writer, essayist, novelist, editor, and filmmaker. He is the recipient of multiple literary awards such as the Governor General's Award, the Giller P ...

Galway Kinnell Galway Mills Kinnell (February 1, 1927 – October 28, 2014) was an American poet. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his 1982 collection, ''Selected Poems'' and split the National Book Award for Poetry with Charles Wright. From 1989 to 1 ...

Mark Strand Mark Strand (April 11, 1934 – November 29, 2014) was a Canadian-born American poet, essayist and translator. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1990 and received the Wallace Stevens Award in 2004 ...

and others. He was also the hand-press printer and demonstrator for Massey College at the University of Toronto. In 1978, in Toronto, he experienced a period of paralysis from the waist down, which he believed for many years to have been a manifestation of Guillain-Barré syndrome. Back in Australia, Brooks taught initially at Duntroon as a one-year replacement for the critic Dorothy Green, then at the University of Western Australia. He and Summers

divorced Divorce (also known as dissolution of marriage) is the process of terminating a marriage or marital union. Divorce usually entails the canceling or reorganizing of the legal duties and responsibilities of marriage, thus dissolving the ...

in 1984. Brooks subsequently formed a long relationship with the poet Nicolette Stasko. His only child, their daughter Jessica, was born in 1985. While in Western Australia Brooks published his first collections of poetry and short fiction. His first collection of poetry, ''The Cold Front'' (1983), won the Ann Elder Award and was shortlisted for the NSW Premier's Prize. ''The Book of Sei'' in 1985 was his first collection of stories.

Career

Brooks returned to Canberra in 1986 to teach at the A.N.U. – a period marked by the publication of the pioneering ''Poetry and Gender'', which he edited with Brenda Walker – and in 1991 took up a lectureship in Australian Literature at the University of Sydney. He briefly edited the journal ''Helix'' and oversaw its transition to ''The Phoenix Review''. In 1995 he published his first novel, ''The House of Balthus'' (based on the paintings of Balthasar Klossowski de Rola), a novel subsequently translated into German and Polish. In 1999 he was asked to succeed Elizabeth Webby as editor of the journal ''Southerly'' and accepted on the understanding that the editorship be shared (from 2000 until 2007 with Noel Rowe; from 2007 until the present with Elizabeth McMahon). In the same year (1999) he became Director of the University of Sydney's Graduate Writing Program. In 2005, Brooks and Stasko having separated, he married the Slovenian-born scholar/activist Teya Pribac, whom he had first encountered when visiting Slovenia to launch an anthology of Australian poetry edited by his long-time friend Bert Pribac (no relation of Teya Pribac). Subsequently, Brooks has developed a strong connection with Slovenia, translating (among others) Slovenia's premier modern poet Srecko Kosovel with Bert Pribac, and seen his own work published in Slovenian editions. his second novel, ''The Fern Tattoo'' (2007), was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin award and other awards In 2010 Brooks was diagnosed with secondary progressive Multiple Sclerosis. In the following year he published ''The Sons of Clovis'', a major work of Australian literary history, on the Ern Malley hoax, and the Symboliste tradition in Australian poetry. He resigned his university post early in 2013. Since then, a long-term vegan, Brooks has devoted his time increasingly to animal advocacy. He and Pribac live in the Blue Mountains, with rescued sheep. In 2016 he published ''Derrida’s Breakfast'', a suite of essays on poetry, philosophy and animals, and early in 2018 he completed the ''100 Days Kangaroo Project'', one hundred posts in one hundred days, offering a cross-section of the kangaroo in contemporary Australian society. He has completed a fifth novel, provisionally entitled ''Metamorphosis'', and ''Animal Dreams'', a substantial collection of essays on animals, literature and philosophy. In 2018 David Brooks retired from the editorship of ''Southerly''. Volume 78 - Number 1 - 2018 "Festschrift" pays tribute to his writing.

Style

In his poetry Brooks was initially significantly influenced by the T’ang Dynasty poets of Ancient China, the 'deep image' poets of the United States (

, James Wright,

Robert Bly Robert Elwood Bly (December 23, 1926 – November 21, 2021) was an American poet, essayist, activist and leader of the mythopoetic men's movement. His best-known prose book is '' Iron John: A Book About Men'' (1990), which spent 62 weeks on ' ...

), and the Polish poet

Czesław Miłosz Czesław Miłosz (, also , ; 30 June 1911 – 14 August 2004) was a Polish-American poet, prose writer, translator, and diplomat. Regarded as one of the great poets of the 20th century, he won the 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature. In its citation, ...

, whom he met in Toronto in the late 1970s. His early fiction was influenced by the magic realism of

Gabriel Garcia Marquez In Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam), Gabriel (); Greek: grc, Γαβριήλ, translit=Gabriḗl, label=none; Latin: ''Gabriel''; Coptic: cop, Ⲅⲁⲃⲣⲓⲏⲗ, translit=Gabriêl, label=none; Amharic: am, ገብር� ...

and others, and the speculative fiction of

and

. His fiction has at times been marked by a distinctive mixing of genres both within writing itself and (mixing, for example, fiction and philosophy) within the thought behind it. While generally regarded as a poet of the 'natural' world, he is often seen as a philosophical novelist, concerned in particular with the borders of and between ways of thinking and being.

Bibliography

Novels

* '' The House of Balthus''. St Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1995. * ''

The Fern Tattoo ''The Fern Tattoo'' is a 2007 novel by the Australian author David Brooks. Dedication "To my daughter Jessica" Plot summary Benedict's mother has recently died; after the funeral, he receives a phone call from Mrs. Darling, a friend of his m ...

''. St Lucia, QLD: University of Queensland Press, 2007. * ''The Umbrella Club''. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2009. * ''The Conversation''. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2012.

Poetry

* ''The Cold Front''. Sydney: Hale & Iremonger, 1983. * ''Walking to Point Clear''. Blackheath: Brandl & Schlesinger, 2005. * ''Urban Elegies''. Sydney:

Island Press Island Press is a nonprofit, environmental publisher based in Washington, D.C., United States, that specializes in natural history, ecology, conservation, and the built environment. Established in 1984, Island Press generates about half of its r ...

, 2007. * ''The Balcony''. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2008. * ''Open House''. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2015.

Short fiction

* ''The Book of Sei and Other Stories''. Sydney: Hale & Iremonger, 1985. ''The Book of Sei''. London: Faber & Faber, 1987. * ''Sheep and the Diva''. Melbourne:

McPhee Gribble McPhee Gribble was a Australian publishing firm, based in Carlton, Victoria. It became an imprint of the Penguin Group. History Founded by Di Gribble and Hilary McPhee in 1975 McPhee Gribble was the initial publisher of works by significant Au ...

, 1990. * ''Black Sea''. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1997. * ''Napoleon's Roads''. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2016.

Non-fiction

* ''The Necessary Jungle: Literature and Excess''. Melbourne: McPhee Gribble, 1990. * ''De/scription''. Sydney: Vagabond Press, 2000. * ''The Sons of Clovis:

Ern Malley The Ern Malley hoax, also called the Ern Malley affair, is Australia's most famous literary hoax. Its name derives from Ernest Lalor "Ern" Malley, a fictitious poet whose biography and body of work were created in one day in 1943 by conservat ...

Adoré Floupette Adoré Floupette is the collective pseudonym of French authors Henri Beauclair and Gabriel Vicaire used for their 1885 literary spoof titled ''Les Déliquescences d'Adoré Floupette'', a collection of poems satirising French symbolism and the Dec ...

and a Secret History of Australian Poetry'', St Lucia:

University of Queensland Press Established in 1948, University of Queensland Press (UQP) is an Australian publishing house. Founded as a traditional university press, UQP has since branched into publishing books for general readers in the areas of fiction, non-fiction, poetr ...

, 2011. * ''Derrida's Breakfast'' (four essays). Blackheath: Brandl & Schlesinger, 2016. * ''The Grass Library''. Blackheath: Brandl & Schlesinger, 2019.

Edited

* With

Brenda Walker Brenda Walker (born 1957 in Grafton, New South Wales) is an Australian writer. She studied at the University of New England in Armidale and, after gaining a PhD in English (on the work of Samuel Beckett) at the Australian National University ...

''Poetry and Gender''. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1989. * ''A. D. Hope: Selected Poems''. Sydney: HarperCollins/Angus & Robertson, 1991. * ''Suddenly Evening: Selected Poems of R.F. Brissenden''. Melbourne: McPhee Gribble, 1991. * ''The Double Looking Glass: New and Classic Essays on the Poetry of A. D. Hope''. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2000. * ''Selected Poetry and Prose of A. D. Hope''. Sydney: Halstead Press, 2000.

Awards

Personal Award

2015/16 Australia Council Fellowship in Fiction

Awards for individual works

Poem sequence (1978) - ''Winner'' 1978 University of Toronto E.J. Pratt Medal and Prize for Poetry ''The Cold Front'' (1983) - ''Winner'' 1983 FAW Anne Elder Poetry Award - ''Shortlisted'' 1983 NSW Premier's Prize for poetry '' The House of Balthus'' (1995) - ''Shortlisted'' 2010 Australian Book Review Fan Poll - ''Shortlisted'' 1995 Aurealis Award for Excellence in Australian Speculative Fiction - ''Shortlisted'' 1996 NBC Banjo Award for Fiction 'Back After eight Months Away', poem sequence (1996) - ''Winner'' (joint) 1996 Newcastle Poetry Prize ''Walking to Point Clear'' (2005) - ''Shortlisted'' 2006 Adelaide Festival John Bray Award for poetry 'The Magician', poem sequence (2006) - ''Shortlisted'' The Broadway Poetry Prize ''

'' (2007) - ''Shortlisted'' 2010 Australian Book Review Fan Poll - ''Shortlisted'' 2008 Miles Franklin Award - ''Shortlisted'' 2007 Colin Roderick Award (for 'the best book published in Australia which deals with any aspect of Australian life') ''The Balcony'' (2008) - ''Shortlisted'' 2009 NSW Premier's Kenneth Slessor Award for poetry ''The Sons of Clovis'' (2011) - ''Shortlisted'' 2011 Colin Roderick Award ''The Conversation'' (2012) - ''Shortlisted'' 2013 Western Australian Premier's Award for fiction ''Open House'' (2015) - ''Shortlisted'' 2015 Queensland Literary Awards, Judith Wright Calanthe Award for poetry ''Derrida’s Breakfast'' (2016) - ''Runner up'' 2016 Mascara Award for Non-fiction

Sources

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Brooks, David 1953 births Living people Australian National University alumni Academic staff of the Australian National University Australian literary critics Australian magazine editors Australian male short story writers Australian poets Meanjin people Academic staff of the University of Sydney University of Toronto alumni