Rosemary Dobson Contextual research:

Her father died when she was only five years old, and her mother found herself
in difficult financial circumstances with two young children. family was helped by
Winifred West, the founder of Frensham, a progressive girls' boarding school in
Mittagong, New South Wales, who offered Marjorie Dobson a position as
housemistress, and scholarships for Rosemary and her sister Ruth
In 1937, she produced a collection of juvenile poems at Frensham, designing the
linocut cover herself and printing and binding the work with the help of the
Frensham librarian and printer Joan Phipson-beginning a lifelong interest in fine
printing and book arts.
1941, she began regularly contributing her poems to leading Australian
newspapers and literary journals, especially the Bulletin and Meanjin Papers, and
in 1944 published her first collection of poetry, In a Convex Mirror, with the
Sydney bookseller Dymocks. Her early poetry often reflected her strong interest
in European art history and the visual arts more broadly.
Dobson's poetry divides into three broad periods. The earliest period begins with
her first volume of poetry, In a Convex Mirror (1944), and ends in her mid-30s
with Child with a Cockatoo (1955). Cock Crow (1965) represents a middle period
and Over the Frontier (1978) marks the beginning of her later period
Cock Crow, appeared a decade later in 1965. The poems in these collections
reflected a shift in her work towards themes taken from personal experienceincluding the experiences of childbirth and motherhood-though these themes are
often explored in complex and impersonal ways
Dobson pursued her interest in art while in England as husband Alec Bolton
became Angus & Robertsons London editor, and travelled frequently in Europe,
including through Greece, where her sister Ruth worked at the Australian
Embassy. (possibly inspired some of her later work on greek mythology)
Her poetry has generally followed classical verse forms, and a deep respect and
reverence for European literary and artistic history and traditions has been an
important element in Dobson's work, though some major poems also draw on
Chinese influences.
"I really feel the necessity of the poetry being clear, so I can communicate
something to people"
1937 I went on the staff as an assistant to the Art teacher. I did a lot of
teaching well, Art was my subject. So I was there a long time, but I mean I was
so much a part of it all. I loved it all.
the poems presented here are part of a search for something only fugitively
glimpsed; a state of grace which one once knew, or imagined, or from which one
was turned away . . . a doomed but urgent wish to express the inexpressible".
Rosemary Dobson

She tries to capture moments of her life and reflects them as she ages as
seen by the distinct evolution of her works through age.