Douglas Stewart (poet) - Life

Life

Douglas Stewart was born in Eltham, Taranaki Province, New Zealand, to an Australian-born lawyer father. He attended primary school in his home town, and a high school thirty miles away, before studying at the University of Wellington. He began studying law there, but soon changed courses to major in writing and journalism.

As a young boy, Stewart fell in love with the New Zealand countryside. He roamed its valleys, rivers and mountains, often camping out and frequently indulging his love of fishing. This appreciation of the wonders of nature was to last throughout his lifetime, so that in 1938, when he moved to Australia, it is understandable that he also fell in love with the unique Australian bush. This he sought to capture in his poetry.

Stewart lived in Australia in 1933 for a short time, working as a free-lance journalist. He then returned to New Zealand where he continued to worked as a journalist, becoming editor of the Stratford Evening Post. In 1937, he travelled to England, employed as a pantry man on the "Doric Star". Once in England, however, he was unable to find work as a journalist, and so he worked for a short time as a barman at the "Churchill Arms" in Knightsbridge. He also met writers Edmund Blunden and John Cowper Powys He returned to Australia in 1938 and took up a position with The Bulletin.

He attempted to enlist in the A.I.F. near the beginning of the war, but was rejected on medical grounds and so volunteered to serve as an air raid warden instead.

He married the painter Margaret Coen in 1945, and they had a daughter, Meg. They lived in a flat in the city of Sydney until 1953 when they moved to St Ives in the northern suburbs. It was still rural countryside then, and close to the natural beauty of Ku-ring-gai Chase. That year he won a UNESCO travelling scholarship to Europe and so the family of three spent eight months on the Continent in 1954.

Stewart and Coen maintained close friendships with several contemporary artists and literati including Norman Lindsay, Kenneth Slessor, Nancy Keesing, David Campbell, Rosemary Dobson and her publisher husband Alec Bolton, and publisher Beatrice Davis.

In addition to his literary pursuits, Stewart was a keen fisherman and often went trout fishing with his friend, the poet David Campbell.

He died in 1985, and was buried at Frenchs Forest Cemetery.