Bruce DaweDonald Bruce Dawe was born on the 15th of February 1930 in Fitzroy Victoria. He is considered to be one of the most influential poets of all time. His parents were of farming backgrounds. Bruce was the youngest of four children with an older brother and two older sisters. The youngest sister wrote poems and his mother recited poems about her Lowlands Scots ancestry.

Bruce was the only one of his siblings to go on to secondary school but subsequently dropped out the age of 16. After leaving school he worked a wide variety of jobs including: a clerk in various firms, a labourer, sales assistant and office boy. In 1953 he completed his Adult Matriculation and enrolled at Melbourne University but left at the end of 1954 in which he then moved to Sydney.

Dawe joined the Royal Australian Air force in 1958 as a trainee telegraphist but then became an education assistant. He served in Malaysia for six months before returning to Melbourne. One of Dawes most well known poems titled Homecoming describes how many of the soldiers returned home dead, affirming his anti-war views. He left RAAF in 1968 and then began teaching at Downlands College.

Along with Homecoming another famous work Weapons Training also described the brutality of war and again highlighted his anti-war persona. Enter Without So Much as Knocking written in 1959 displays Australia during the introduction of television with consumerism being a major theme in the poem. Homo Suburbiensis depicts a man who is tending to his garden which when structured is beautiful but wild when it is chaotic. This is taken, as the garden representing the mans thoughts, which organised is a wonderful place but when unkempt is confusing and chaotic.

Despite enlisting in the military Dawe was strongly anti-war which often was reflected in his works. He believes it lacked sense historically and was pointless. He saw it as an act of senseless violence and often voiced his opinion on it.