Gavin Greenlees (15 April 1930 – 5 December 1983) was an Australian poet. He was born in
Melbourne, Victoria, but later spent most of his time in Sydney, where he became known as a
bohemian figure.
Life
As early as 1943, Greenlees had poems published in the periodical ''
Pertinent.'' He won three successive poetry competitions sponsored by the
Australian Broadcasting Corporation and his poems later were widely published, notably in the 'Australian Weekend Book'. He experimented with
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to l ...
and studied
Freud
Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies explained as originating in conflicts in ...
,
Lautreamont,
Rimbaud and
James Joyce for several years. In 1949 he began studying
Jung
Carl Gustav Jung ( ; ; 26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. Jung's work has been influential in the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, philo ...
,
Dostoyevsky and
Ouspensky and the works of
Aleister Crowley and the
Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.
Greenlees became the lover of the occultist and artist
Rosaleen Norton, almost thirteen years his senior, and they published together ''The Art of Rosaleen Norton''. The sexually explicit nature of some of the artwork, led to the publisher being charged with producing an obscene publication, and continued distribution within Australia was only permitted if some of the offending images were obliterated with black ink.
U.S.A. customs officers burned imported copies.
From 1955 onwards, Greenlees had many prolonged admissions to psychiatric hospitals in Sydney suffering from hallucinations and paranoia,
[''Pan's Daughter: The Strange World of Rosaleen Norton'', pp. 88-89. Nevill Drury. Collins Australia. 1988. .] possibly made worse by his regular use of drugs including
amphetamines and
LSD. He died aged 53, on 5 December 1983.
Footnotes
References
* ''Pan's Daughter: The Strange World of Rosaleen Norton''. Nevill Drury. Collins Australia. 1988. (and second edition: ''Pan's Daughter: The Magical World of Rosaleen Norton''. Nevill Drury Mandrake 1993 )
* ''The Art of Rosaleen Norton with poems by Gavin Greenlees''. Edited: Walter Glover, Sydney. 1952. 2nd edition: Walter Glover, Bondi Beach. 1982. .
* ''Supplement to: The Art of Rosaleen Norton (1982 Edition) with poems by Gavin Greenlees''. Walter Glover, Bondi Beach, N.S.W. 1984. .
{{DEFAULTSORT:Greenless, Gavin
1930 births
1983 deaths
20th-century Australian poets
Australian male poets
20th-century Australian male writers