Author
Bruce Dawe
In addition to being a very popular children's author, Bruce Dawe is also one of the biggest selling and most highly regarded of Australian poets. Known as the Poet of Suburbia, he lives an unconventionally conventional life. He grew up in a household where his father, a farm labourer, was often unemployed and often absent from home. His rather eccentric mother longed for the kind of stability and success in life that circumstances always denied her. Bruce drifted through his early years showing promise as a writer but finding little direction for his life. The variety of his many occupations – labourer, postman, university failure, air force officer, father and teacher – has served to give Bruce extraordinary empathy with people from all backgrounds, which characterises his poetry and gives a voice to so-called ordinary Australians.