Adamson, Robert (1943-2022), an Australian poet, editor, and publisher, emerged in the late 1960’s as one of the finest talents of the New Australian School of poetry. He became a prominent member of the Poetry Society of Australia and called for an expansion of the society’s poetic horizons. Adamson was one of several thinkers who complained that Australian poets and readers were not aware enough of poetic developments outside Australia. A controversy arose over the amount of non-Australian verse published within the pages of the society’s Poetry Magazine. The magazine later ceased publication, and in 1968 Adamson became editor of its replacement, New Poetry. Under his control, New Poetry published much experimental verse by foreign writers.
Robert Henry Adamson was born on May 17, 1943, in Sydney, Australia. During his youth, he misused drugs and was imprisoned. His experiences during this period formed a basis for his early poetry. His first works included Canticles on the Skin (1970) and The Rumour (1971). Where I Come From (1979) is also partly based on his life experiences. Adamson chose what he felt was his most important verse for Selected Poems 1970-1989 (1990).
Adamson combined his writing activities with a career in publishing. In addition to editing the magazine New Poetry, in 1970 he joined the publishing company Prism Books and became, together with another Australian poet, Dorothy Hewett, the editor and director of Big Smoke Books in 1979.
Adamson settled in a house on the Hawkesbury River in New South Wales, where he set up the Paper Bark Press with his second wife, the Australian artist and photographer Juno Gemes, and poet Michael Wilding. Much of Adamson’s work drew great inspiration from this location. This work includes Waving to Hart Crane (1994) and Black Water: Approaching Zukofsky (1997). Waving to Hart Crane won the Christopher Brennan Award in 1996, an annual award from the Fellowship of Australian Writers given to a poet for a distinctive and sustained contribution to Australian poetry. In The Language of Oysters (1997), Adamson describes the lives of oyster farmers working on the Hawkesbury River. The book combines Adamson’s highly varied poetry with Gemes’s photographs. Adamson’s later poetry collections include Mulberry Leaves: New and Old Poems, 1970-2001 (2001), Reading the River (2004), The Goldfinches of Baghdad (2006), The Kingfisher’s Soul (2009), and Net Needle (2015). Adamson also wrote the novel Zimmer’s Essay (1974) with Bruce Hanford, Wards of the State: An Autobiographical Novella (1992), and the autobiography Inside Out (2004). He died on Dec. 16, 2022.
