Peter Steele (poet)

Peter Daniel Steele AM (22 August 1939 – 27 June 2012) was an Australian poet and academic, who was awarded the Christopher Brennan Award, for lifetime achievement in poetry, in 2010.

Peter Steele
Born	Peter Daniel Steele 22 August 1939 Perth, Western Australia, Australia
Died	27 June 2012 (aged 72) Kew, Victoria, Australia
Nationality	Australian
Alma mater	University of Melbourne
Occupation	poet and academic
Known for	Plenty: Art into Poetry

Steele was educated at Christian Brothers' College, Perth; Loyola College, Melbourne; the University of Melbourne; Canisius College, Sydney and the Jesuit Theological College, Melbourne. He gained an MA and PhD from the University of Melbourne and joined the academic staff there in 1966. He later administered the Department of English and held a Personal Chair in English there; he went on to become Emeritus Professor of English at the university. He remained at the university until his death in 2012.[1]

Steele was a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and a Visiting Professor at the University of Alberta, at Georgetown University and at Loyola University Chicago.

In 2012 he was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM), for service to literature and higher education as a poet, author, scholar and teacher, and to the Catholic Church.[2]

Bibliography

Poetry

Collections

• Word from Lilliput : poems. 1973.
• Marching on Paradise. 1984.
• Invisible Riders (1999)
• Plenty: Art into Poetry (2003)
• The Whispering Gallery: Art Into Poetry (2006)
• White Knight with Beebox: New and Selected Poems (2008)
• A Local Habitation: Poems and Homilies (2010)
• The Gossip and the Wine (2011)

List of poems

Title	Year	First published	Reprinted/collected
Saying	1965	Steele, Peter (March 1965). "Saying". Meanjin Quarterly. 24 (1): 112.

Non-fiction

• Jonathan Swift: Preacher and Jester (1978)
• The Autobiographical Passion: studies in the self on show (1989)
• "Joseph Brodsky 1940–1996". Tribute. Quadrant. 40 (3): 16–17. Mar 1996.
• Bread for the Journey: Homilies (2002)
• Braiding the Voices: Essays in Poetry (2012)

Obituaries

• Australian Book Review[3]
• The Sydney Morning Herald[4]

Notes

1. University of Melbourne - Award of Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters - Professor Peter Steele Archived 2015-04-05 at the Wayback Machine
2. Austlit - Peter Steele
3. "Remembering Peter Steele" by Kate Middleton, Australian Book Review
4. "Peter Daniel Steele, AM Priest, Poet, Academic" by Gerald O'Collins, The Sydney Morning Herald, 3 July 2012