Douglas Stewart (poet) - Literary Career

Literary Career

Stewart wrote his first poetry at fourteen years of age, while he still lived in New Zealand. He began initially because of the need to produce a poem for his school magazine, but his love for reading and writing poetry developed rapidly. He read widely, including Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Milton and Coleridge, enjoying their ability to compact powerful description into language, and to convey emotion through sound, rhythm and word selection. As he read he worked on his own writing. His father was a subscriber to The Bulletin from Australia and the young Stewart regularly sent poems to that magazine, the vast majority of which were rejected. However, he had the thrill of seeing some of his poems published in a companion magazine, The Australian Women's Mirror, as well as newspapers and magazines in New Zealand. This encouraged him to continue.

After his university studies, Stewart worked as a journalist in New Zealand in the early 1930s. In 1936, he published his first volume of poems, Green Lions, before moving permanently to Australia in 1938 to become Assistant Literary Editor of The Bulletin. Two years later he was appointed Literary Editor of its "Red Page", and he retained this position for the next twenty years. He left in 1961, after a change in ownership, and joined the Australian publisher, Angus & Robertson, where he worked until 1972. He was also a member of the advisory board of the Commonwealth Literary Fund from 1955-70.

The years working for The Bulletin were highly productive, both in terms of personal output and for his contribution to Australia's literary life. Goodwin writes that he "had a profound influence on the publishing of Australian poetry in the 1940s and early 1950s". Goodwin goes on to write that "More eclectic than he is often given credit for, he did have a distaste for rhetoric and declamation and a preference for the Audenesque air of jaunty reasonableness" and that "he was sceptical about large religious affirmation". The Bulletin, along with Meanjin and Southerly were significant magazines for promoting the poetic achievement of writers and for establishing a cultural milieu in which younger poets could refine their skills. During his editorship The Bulletin published such poets as Judith Wright, Francis Webb, David Campbell, Rosemary Dobson, Chris Wallace-Crabbe, Randolph Stow and Vivian Smith. While working with The Bulletin, Stewart published six volumes of his own poems, co-edited two books of Australian poetry, and produced a number of verse-plays and a volume of short stories. He also contributed to the script for the award-winning Australian documentary, The Back of Beyond (1954).

Stewart, like Campbell, Wright and many poets of his time, drew much of his inspiration from nature, and is best known for his "meditative nature poems". His last book was a diary about the garden at his home in St. Ives.