Robert Adamson (1943–2022), poet and publisher, divided his childhood between Neutral Bay and the Hawkesbury River, where his grandfather lived. From his teens until his mid-twenties he spent most of his time in correctional institutions, where he developed an interest in poetry. His first book of poetry was Canticles on the Skin (1970); he took out the first of his many awards with his Collected Poems (1976), which won the Grace Leven Poetry Prize. The Clean Dark (1989) won him several major awards including both the NSW and the Victorian Premier's Awards, the Kenneth Slessor Prize and the Banjo Award. He also won the prestigious Christopher Brennan Prize for lifetime achievement, the Patrick White Award, and the Age Book of the Year Award for The Goldfinches of Baghdad (2006). His autobiographical collection, Wards of the State, combining prose and poetry, was published in 1992, and the autobiography Inside Out in 2004. In 2012 he became the inaugural Chair in Poetry at the University of Technology Sydney. His last book, Reaching Light: Selected poems, was published in 2020. For most of his adult life, he lived on the Hawkesbury, near the place where he spent much time as a boy, and the river 'flows through' his poetry.
Gift of the artist 2013. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program.
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