Michael Dransfield

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Michael Dransfield ca. 1972, pictured on the cover of Drug Poems

Michael Dransfield (12 September 1948–20 April 1973) was an Australian poet of the 1960s and early 1970s, who acquired a considerable reputation before his premature death.

Dransfield was born in Sydney, and educated at Sydney Grammar School. He briefly studied English literature and language at the University of New South Wales and Sydney University before dropping out. He worked for some months as a clerk at the Australian Taxation Office before drifting into the counter-culture. From then on he worked intermittently, living mainly in Paddington, Balmain, and Darlinghurst in Sydney, and in the north coast town of Casino, and he travelled frequently between Tasmania and Queensland, visiting his large group of friends and fellow poets.

Dransfield wrote his first poem at the age of eight and began to write regularly at fourteen. He was a prolific writer of lyrical poems which gained wide attention early, and which later in his brief career came to focus more and more on drug experiences. His poetry was first published in the mid-Sixties in the underground press that sprang up during that time of great political and social unrest. His work often reflected the voices of people marginalised by society. He experimented with drugs and alternative lifestyles, was a prominent member of Sydney's counter-culture and an active protester against the Vietnam War; he was conscripted, but was excused for health reasons.

The quality of his poetry soon saw him gain a broader audience, and he became one of the most widely read poets of his generation, as well as one of the most prolific, although his output was exclusively restricted to short works. Like his close contemporary Lillian Roxon, Dransfield was also a voluminous correspondent.

Dransfield's poems were published in Meanjin, Southerly, Poetry Australia and Poetry magazine. His first published collection was Streets of the Long Voyage. He published two more books, including Drug poems (Sun Books, 1972) which was the result of a drug-inspired poetic experiment.

Between 1967 and 1969, Dransfield corresponded and exchanged poems with Peter Kocan, who had been imprisoned for attempting to assassinate federal opposition leader Arthur Calwell, and who was then a patient at the Morisset Mental Hospital. The letters comprise drafts of poems by Dransfield, quotes of poems by other poets, and recommendations for books Kocan should read. The letters also reflect Dransfield's extensive writing and reveal insights into his mental state and personal struggles during this period.

With others of his generation, Dransfield rebelled against older conservative poets like James McAuley and A. D. Hope, but he often drew on traditional forms when crafting his poems. Critics have drawn comparisons with Tennyson and Swinburne, but his unconventional use of punctuation, typography and language produced unique expressions of his own time. Dransfield spent several periods in rural Australia, inspiring many poems which explore the differences between urban and rural existence. He also regularly explored issues related to drug use and the fragility of human relationships.

In his early twenties Dransfield was plagued by ill health. He died at the Mater Misericordiae Hospital, Sydney, on Good Friday, 1973, aged only 24, leaving behind close to a thousand poems. Although it is often claimed that he died of a heroin overdose, his biographer Patricia Dobrez reports that the coronor's finding on the cause of death was "acute broncho-pneumonia and brain damage", and his rejection from national service suggests that his underlying health problems pre-dated his drug use.

The reputation of Dransfield's poetry remains strong. Rodney Hall, who as poetry editor of The Australian newspaper had been among the first to publish Dransfield’s poetry, edited and posthumously published several collections of Dransfield's poetry during the late 1970s and early 1980s, including Collected Poems (UQP, 1987).

In 1999 Patricia Dobrez published a biography, Michael Dransfield's Lives : A Sixties Biography.