Peter Steele

 “each breath a gift, each glance a blessing”

July 9

Andrew Bullen on Peter Steele

An early poem, Matins, places us in Parkville, where Peter Steele (1939-2012) spent much of his life and introduces us to his style: a particular event, whose details are presented in wide-ranging references, some of them suggesting a Christian sub-text; all given with a humane range of tones. 

His predilection was for poems and poets capable of a dazzling range of forms and references and resonances: Auden, Merwin, Ashbery, Porter. He had a special closeness to Vincent Buckley, and so we might see him as an academic poet, even a Melbourne University poet. 

Some overtly Christian indeed Christ poems: A.D. 33 and a late suite presenting Christ as Elemental Man: Breathing Days (air), Star Man (fire); Green Man (earth); Water Man (water).  Finally Rehearsal, his Hymn to God my God in my sicknesse, a poem I had the privilege of reading at Peter’s burial in the Melbourne General Cemetery. 

Peter Steele was born in Perth. He joined the Jesuits in Melbourne in 1957. Most of his life was spent teaching and writing at Melbourne University, where he held a Personal Chair in English.  He also was a visiting scholar in Jesuit universities in America. After six years as Provincial of the Jesuits in Australia, he was Scholar-in-Residence at Newman College from 1991 until his death in 2012. He wrote poetry, texts for hymns, books of critical essays, studies of Peter Porter and of Jonathan Swift.

Andrew Bullen is a Jesuit priest, whose ministry has involved him in secondary education (including teaching literature), in Jesuit training, and in parish work.  He has published one book of poetry, ‘Etiquette with Angels’.  He was born in 1947 in old South Wales and lost a leg to cancer when he was 13.  His family migrated to Australia in 1964, and he joined the Jesuits in 1967.