Mark O'Connor (poet)
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Mark O'Connor (born 1945) is an Australian poet, writer, inventor, and
environmental activist The environmental movement (sometimes referred to as the ecology movement) is a social movement that aims to protect the natural world from harmful environmental practices in order to create sustainable living. In its recognition of humanity a ...
, who has been a councillor (2012–2014) of the Australian Conservation Foundation. A major focus of O'Connor's work has been upon increasing the audience for poetry in English. His poetry has also involved co-operation with environmental scientists at various institutions. He has said he seeks to help Australians appreciate the variety and value of their own landscapes, and to adapt a European language (English) to regions for which it still lacks vocabulary. He is the author of twelve books of poetry, several of which deal with regions of Australia such as the
Great Barrier Reef The Great Barrier Reef is the world's largest coral reef system, composed of over 2,900 individual reefs and 900 islands stretching for over over an area of approximately . The reef is located in the Coral Sea, off the coast of Queensland, ...
and the Blue Mountains, often collaborating with well-known nature photographers. He is also strongly interested in other languages and cultures. In 1977-1980 he travelled in Europe on a Marten Bequest Fellowship to write poetry about the Mediterranean region. He is the editor of the Oxford University Press anthology ''Two Centuries of Australian Poetry''. In 2000 he became the first "Olympic poet" of the modern Olympiads, receiving an Australia Council fellowship "to report in poetry upon all aspects of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games". He has also written short stories, literary criticism, and two books on the issue of
overpopulation Overpopulation or overabundance is a state in which the population of a species is larger than the carrying capacity of its environment. This may be caused by increased birth rates, lowered mortality rates, reduced predation or large scale migr ...
as a danger to environments. He has won numerous national and international prizes and awards, and has undertaken fellowships or writers-in-residency in several countries including United States, Europe, Russia, China and India. More recently he has produced updated verse-translations of some of Shakespeare's 400-year-old plays into lightly modernized English. He lives with his wife Jan Eagleton/O'Connor in Canberra.


Biography and career

Mark O'Connor was born in Melbourne in 1945, the son of Kevin John O'Connor, later the Chief Stipendiary Magistrate of Victoria, and of Elaine Riordan/O'Connor, a journalist. He attended Xavier College in Melbourne, graduating as dux in 1961. In 1965 he graduated BA Hons 1 from Melbourne University with Honours in English and Classics. Post 1965 he taught English literature at the University of Western Australia and the Australian National University. He broke onto the literary scene when his first published poems won the Poetry Australia Biennial Poetry Prize in 1973, and again in 1975. Around this time he worked briefly as a diver at One-Tree Island on the Great Barrier Reef, and he was also the gardener at the Dunk Island Resort in 1976–77. His 1978 poem ''Planting the Dunk Botanic Gardens'', which describes his attempt to revive and expand Edmund James Banfield's project of planting "every tropical fruit tree" on
Dunk Island Dunk Island, known as ''Coonanglebah'' in the Warrgamay and Dyirbal languages, is an island within the locality of Dunk in the Cassowary Coast Region, Queensland, Australia. It lies off the Australian east coast, opposite the town of Missio ...
, was later developed into a play, which was presented at the Edinburgh Festival in 2007 and in Adelaide at the Holden St Theatre in 2009. In 1977 he received a Marten Bequest fellowship to write poetry about the Mediterranean world. During his travels, he spent three winters house-sitting for the actress
Miriam Margolyes Miriam Margolyes ( ; born 18 May 1941) is a British and Australian actress. Known for her work as a character actor across film, television, and stage, she received the BAFTA for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Mrs. Mingott in Marti ...
in Italy, and writing about Italian village life. In 1979 a story set in that village (Montisi) won the ''London Timess short story contest, which gave him the funds to return to Australia in early 1980; but he has maintained links with Italy. O'Connor's first book of largely European poems ''The Eating Tree'' (1980) and his subsequent early ''Selected Poems'' (1986) showed a move from the natural world towards more human-centred themes, and attracted attention from European critics. Emeritus Professor Michel Fabre of the Sorbonne called O'Connor's "a mind full of sensitivity and passion to new probings or to sometimes disenchanted narrations (contatations)". Fabre added that O'Connor excelled in:
(re-)discovering, from a new viewpoint, places to which our Greco-Latin culture would attach a supposedly precise and limited connotation. Under the regard of O'Connor, for example, the icons of St Titus's church in Heraklion become for us as much "strangers" as the rock-carvings of the Aborigines. . . . Using language itself, he questions our relationship to the "referent", and also the assumptions that lie behind human communication. All this with discretion, unobtrusively. Though he uses the modes of possibility rather than of assertion, he lays claim for us all to the wholeness of a global culture.
In 1980 he taught Professional Writing at the University of Canberra, but thereafter returned to North Queensland and reverted to being a professional poet, though he did terms as writer in residence at several Australian universities. In 1988 he married the former
James Cook University James Cook University (JCU) is a public university in North Queensland, Australia. The second oldest university in Queensland, JCU is a teaching and research institution. The university's main campuses are located in the tropical cities of Cair ...
administrator Jan Eagleton, having followed her to Canberra when her career took her to the Australian National University in 1987. As an interviewer for the
Australian National Library The National Library of Australia (NLA), formerly the Commonwealth National Library and Commonwealth Parliament Library, is the largest reference library in Australia, responsible under the terms of the ''National Library Act 1960'' for "mainta ...
's Oral History Unit, he helped to record the oral histories of A D Hope and other literary figures. He has won numerous literary awards. In the 1980s and 1990s he compiled and edited the much re-printed Oxford anthology ''Two Centuries of Australian Poetry'' (1988, revised 1996) which was structured by themes to present the main "conversations" of the nation. This was one of the first general anthologies to integrate and emphasize the poetry of Aboriginal experiences, of immigrants' experiences, of women's experiences, and of "Accepting a Landscape". Subsequently, he published two prose books on
overpopulation Overpopulation or overabundance is a state in which the population of a species is larger than the carrying capacity of its environment. This may be caused by increased birth rates, lowered mortality rates, reduced predation or large scale migr ...
as a neglected cause of environmental damage: ''This Tired Brown Land'' (1998) and, more recently, ''Overloading Australia'' (2008, 2010, co-written with William J. Lines). Through the 1990s he was National Vice-president of Sustainable Population Australia, whose patrons included the fellow authors
Judith Wright Judith Arundell Wright (31 May 191525 June 2000) was an Australian poet, environmentalist and campaigner for Aboriginal land rights. She was a recipient of the Christopher Brennan Award and nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 196 ...
,
Tim Flannery Timothy Fridtjof Flannery (born 28 January 1956) is an Australian mammalogist, palaeontologist, environmentalist, conservationist, explorer, author, science communicator Science communication encompasses a wide range of activities tha ...
, Mary White and Fr Paul Collins, and often spoke on the media. In 1999 he was appointed H.C. Coombs Creative Arts Fellow at the
Australian National University The Australian National University (ANU) is a public university, public research university and member of the Group of Eight (Australian universities), Group of Eight, located in Canberra, the capital of Australia. Its main campus in Acton, A ...
. In 2000 he was given a grant from the
Australia Council for the Arts Creative Australia, formerly known as the Australia Council for the Arts and the Australia Council, is the country's official arts council, serving as an arts funding and advisory body for the Government of Australia. The council was announ ...
to write poetry about the
2000 Olympic Games The 2000 Summer Olympics, officially the Games of the XXVII Olympiad, officially branded as Sydney 2000, and also known as the Games of the New Millennium, were an international multi-sport event held from 15 September to 1 October ...
. The grant included, in some cases, the demanding requirement of "next day after an event" poem completion, so it would be available for radio and television. An example was his poem "Coming Home Strong: for
Cathy Freeman Catherine Astrid Salome Freeman (born 16 February 1973) is an Australian former sprinter, who specialised in the 400 metres event. Her personal best of 48.63 seconds currently ranks her as the ninth-fastest woman of all time, set while fin ...
", which he read on the ABC Radio National Breakfast Program the morning after she won the Women's 400 Metres event. In 2000, O'Connor published an updated "Collected Poems", viz. ''The Olive Tree: Collected Poems of Mark O'Connor''. In addition to his own poetry, since 2002, he has translated 3 of Shakespeare's 400-year-old plays (in verse but into more intelligible lightly modernized modern English). The three plays are: ''Twelfth Night, Henry IV Part 1'', and ''Troilus and Cressida''. Philippa Kelly, Resident Dramaturg at the California Shakespeare Theater, has described his translations as "nuanced, precise and inconspicuous, releasing Shakespeare's playtext into the modern world". In September 2016 O'Connor received a PhD in Shakespearian Studies from the University of Western Australia for his translations. In 2001 he was a significant contributor to the Oxford University Press book ''Protected Area Management'' on techniques for managing national parks. He is also the inventor and patent awardee for the ''Pro-NOUNCE-it'' software that allows individual readers to selectively display the pronunciation of English words without changing the spelling. O'Connor's work on discovering, grafting, and breeding new fruiting cultivars of feijoa (''Feijoa sellowiana''), has often been documented in
The Canberra Times ''The Canberra Times'' is a daily newspaper in Canberra, Australia, which is published by Australian Community Media. It was founded in 1926, and has changed ownership and format several times. History ''The Canberra Times'' was launched in 1 ...
, and in 2013 he donated a plantation of 40 cultivars of feijoa to the Lindsay Pryor National Arboretum.


Increasing the audience for poetry in English

The fifth edition of the Oxford University Press Antholog
"Seven Centuries of Poetry in English"
(2003) gives O'Connor more space than any poet of later birth-date than Seamus Heaney, born 1939, and its editor John Leonard has described O'Connor as, "that rare thing, a genuinely popular poet of real power and complexity". The Australian poet Les Murray endorsed him as "our Olympic poet. He is a conservationist with a scientific muse, yet has the polished verbal gold of a classicist"; while
Manning Clark Charles Manning Hope Clark, (3 March 1915 – 23 May 1991) was an Australian historian and the author of the best-known general history of Australia, his six-volume ''A History of Australia'', published between 1962 and 1987. He has been descri ...
praised the accessibility of O'Connor's verse and described him as "a man who is singing to those who have ears to hear, a hymn in praise to life." ''The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature'' calls his 1990 ''Fire-Stick Farming'',
A remarkably fine collection, which reinforces the impression that O'Connor's poetry draws strongly on the external natural scene, and the diversity of flora, fauna, and landscapes. Interwoven with these externals, however, are frequent sensitive insights into the nature of existence itself. A poet who has won a popular following, O'Connor has also won a reputation as one of Australia's major contemporary nature poets.Entry on O'Connor in ''The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature'' (1994), p. 588.


Collaborations with environmental scientists

''The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature'' describes O'Connor as "... a knowledgeable amateur biologist, hohas had a lifelong concern for the Australian environment and its protection." O'Connor has worked closely with environmental scientists at the Museum of Victoria, where he served as the Thomas Ramsay Science and Humanities Scholar (1987–1988), and also at the Australian National University. In 1999 he began a three-year term as visiting fellow in the ANU's Department of Archaeology and Natural History, working with Professors Geoffrey Hope and Rhys Jones. O'Connor had previously used Jones's phrase
fire-stick farming Fire-stick farming, also known as cultural burning and cool burning, is the practice of Aboriginal Australians regularly using fire to burn vegetation, which has been practised for thousands of years. There are a number of purposes for doing this ...
as the title of one of his collections of poetry about regions of Australia. In 2013 he presented, at the National Museum's Day of Celebration of the Life of Mike Smith, as a long-time friend and an admirer of Smith's work, a 5-part poem "Desert Archaeology" describing Smith's exploration of th
Puritjarra
rock-shelter:
                                  . . . ''That first trench''
''Is a manhole inserted intuitively into Time''.
''100 years in a spade-spit is large-print history.''
''10,000 years in 4 millimetres is telephone-book fine ....''
''And sudden as if you'd been served with a summons''
''The stencilled hands remind''
''That this cave which you've found''
''Is not yours, and not found by you.''


Poetry in Civil Celebrancy

O'Connor is a strong supporter of the civil celebrancy movement, and of the views of
Dally Messenger III Dally Messenger III (born 4 February 1938), is an Australian developer and media spokesperson of the fledgling civil celebrant program founded by Australian Attorney-General, Lionel Murphy. He has also been credited with contributions as an auth ...
, who as principal of the ''International College of Celebrancy'' advocated the use of poems or prose-poems, chosen by the couple in consultation with their celebrant, in place of the traditional religious marriage ceremonies. O'Connor, who held a civil celebrant's licence himself from 2004 to 2015, taught professional development courses on ceremonial performance. In these he argued that, "Poetry is memorable speech: rich and evocative memorable speech that is designed to be physically rolled in the mouth." His essays on poetry as a physical art can be found on the International College of Celebrancy's website. O'Connor's MSS are held in the University of NSW and National Library collections.


Honours and recognition

O'Connor was awarded the
Medal of the Order of Australia The Order of Australia is an Australian honour that recognises Australian citizens and other persons for outstanding achievement and service. It was established on 14 February 1975 by Elizabeth II, Queen of Australia, on the advice of then ...
in the
2024 King's Birthday Honours The 2024 King's Birthday Honours are appointments by some of the 15 Commonwealth realms of King Charles III to various orders and honours to reward and highlight good works by citizens of those countries. The Birthday Honours are awarded as part o ...
for "service to literature as a poet and educator".


References


External links


Mark O'Connor's official site

Brief bio at AustLit Agent
{{DEFAULTSORT:Oconnor, Mark Australian poets Australian environmentalists Australian non-fiction writers Recipients of the Medal of the Order of Australia Australian people of Irish descent Non-fiction environmental writers Sustainability advocates Living people 1945 births Translators of William Shakespeare