Bernard Patrick O’Dowd

Bernard Patrick O’Dowd (born April 11, 1866, Beaufort, Victoria, Australia—died September 2, 1953, Melbourne, Victoria) was a poet who gave Australian poetry a more philosophical tone, supplanting the old bush ballads that had dominated for many years.

Educated in the arts and law at the University of Melbourne, O’Dowd taught for a while, worked as a librarian, then made a successful career as a parliamentary draftsman for the Australian Parliament. In Dawnward? (1903), his first book of verse, he expressed strong political convictions. The Silent Land followed in 1906, and the philosophical Dominions of the Boundary in 1907. In an important prose pamphlet “Poetry Militant” (1909), O’Dowd, a political and philosophical radical, argued that the poet should educate, propagandize, and indoctrinate. His later work included The Bush (1912), a long poem about the Australian nation; Alma Venus! and Other Verses (1921), social satire in verse; and The Poems: Collected Edition (1941).