Edwin James Wilson is an Australian poet, painter, and lapsed scientist, with a strong interest in history. Born: 27 October 1942, Lismore, New South Wales Occupations: Science teacher ; lecturer Armidale Teachers’ College ; Education Officer, The Australian Museum, ; Community Relations, Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney ; Hon. Research Associate. Genres: Author of 27 books, including poetry, about poetry, prose, memoirs, and social history. Notables: The Wishing Tree and Poetry of Place, Falling Up Into Verse, The Mullumbimby Kid, New Collected Poems, and Stardust Painter-Poet.
Publications
Articles and poems published in numerous Journals and Magazines. Published books include: Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney 1982, Banyan, 1982, Drawn from Life 1983, Liberty, Egality, Fraternity! 1984, The Dragon Tree, 1985, Discovering the Domain, 1986, Wild Tamarind, 1987, Falling Up Into Verse, 1989, Songs of the Forest, 199o, The Rose Garden, 1991, The Wishing Tree, 1992, The Botanic Verses, 1993, Chaos Theory, 1997, Cosmos Seven, 1998, The Mullumbimby Kid: A Portrait of the Poet as a Child, 2000, Cedar House, 2001, Asteroid Belt, 2002, Anthology: Collected Poems 2002, Poetry of Place, 2004, The Melancholy Dane: A Portrait of the Poet as a Young Man, 2006, My Brother Jim, 2009, New Selected Poems 2010, The Mullumbimby Kid 2012, New Collected Poems 2012, Oliver Bainbridge – Lord Nelson's Great Grandson? 2013, Mullumbimby Dreaming, 2014, Stardust Painter-Poet, 2015, Lord Nelson, Uncle Oliver and I, 2017, Synthesis, 2018, and Long-Distance Poet, 2019.
Life
Edwin James Wilson spent his early years in the then isolated farming community of East Wardell, in far northern coastal New South Wales, having been known as 'Peter' as a child, whose father died before he was born. When his mother remarried Henry Forbes, cabinetmaker, young 'Peter Wilson/Forbes' started school at Brunswick Heads. The 'boy poet' spent the formative decade in Mullumbimby, prior to moving to Tweed Heads in 1959. At Mullumbimby he became a passionate orchid collector. Before attending Mullumbimby High School his mother told him that his name was Edwin and not Peter, and he would have to change for school banking, which was quite destabilising, an adjustment that was not properly made until he went to Murwillumbah High School. A scholarship to Armidale Teachers' College provided his 'escape' from rural poverty, and was a period of aesthetic flowering. An appointment to The Forest High School, Frenchs Forest enabled him to complete a science degree at the University of New South Wales. His first brief marriage coinciding with his appointment as a lecturer at Armidale Teachers' College, was his second age of poetic awakening. In 1972 he had returned to Sydney, to work at The Australian Museum, quite literally the 'House of the Muses', and 'as fell so painfully out of love verse improved', and he has written ever since that time. When the child of that failed marriage was accidentally killed in a road accident a lot more grief was sublimated into verse. His first significant success in Literary Journals was with Poetry Australia. His second lasting marriage, coincided with his literary hoax in opposition to quotas ). As a result of this he was sin-binned in some quarters for a score of years. In 1980 he moved to the Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney, the closest thing to a rainforest in the city. Because of the 'Eileen' incident a lot of doors had closed to him, so in 1982 he set up Woodbine Press, a then subsidiary of Edwards & Shaw, with Dick Edwards as his silent partner. Banyan, his first book of poems, was printed with hot metal by Edwards & Shaw in their last year of business. Since then he has published twenty seven books, through Woodbine Press and other outlets. Edwin Wilson retired from paid work in 2003, as a Research Associate of the Gardens, working with Phil Spence on a breeding program using high altitude New Guinea Latouria-type orchid hybrids, to try to bring cold-tolerance into bench quality plants. In 2014 Phil Spence registered the hybrid Dendrobium tapiniense x Dendrobium johsoniae with the Royal Horticultural Society under the Grex name of Dendrobium Edwin Wilson. In 2003 he had started art classes at the Lavender Bay Gallery, and was elected as an Exhibiting Member of the Royal Art Society of New South Wales, and won the Medal of Distinction at the 2010 RAS Spring Show, with a joint exhibition in 2011, and a Mullumbimby-themed exhibition at the Tweed River Gallery in 2014. After an article on the centenary of ‘Tidge’ Wilson’s birth in the local paper at Lismore, New South Wales, at ‘the ripe old age of sixty one’ he was ‘discovered’ by his brother Jim, then retired, who had worked as a carpenter/builder in his life, and died in 2008. Wilson’s twentieth book, and tenth book of poetry, My Brother Jim, was dedicated to Edwin James Onslow/Wilson, 1939–2008. His New Collected Poems came out in 2012. Stardust Painter-Poet is a glossy art catalogue with paintings linked to some of his thematic poems and poem fragments. Edwin and Cheryl have three adult children, and live at Crows Nest, a suburb of Sydney. Wilson's literary papers are held in the Mitchell Library at the State Library of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. Included In: Who’s Who of Australian Writers, D.W. Thorpe, 1st and 2nd editions. Thylazine database
The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature, William Wilde, Joy Hooton and Barry Andrews, Oxford University Press, Australia, 2nd edition, 1994.
