| Peter Steele | |
| Birth Name: | Peter Daniel Steele |
| Birth Date: | 1939 8, df=yes |
| Birth Place: | Perth, Western Australia |
| Death Place: | Kew, Victoria, Australia |
| Nationality: | Australian |
| Known For: | Plenty: Art into Poetry |
| Occupation: | poet and academic |
| Alma Mater: | University of Melbourne |
Peter Daniel Steele (22 August 1939 – 27 June 2012) was an Australian poet and academic at the University of Melbourne. He was also a member of the Jesuit order and a Catholic priest. He was awarded the Christopher Brennan Award, for lifetime achievement in poetry, in 2010.
Peter Daniel Steele was born on 22 August 1939, the eldest of three sons, to an English immigrant father and Irish-English-Australian mother, Jesse. His father became Catholic when he married Jesse, and Peter was pious as a boy.[1]
Steele grew up in Perth, Western Australia. He was educated at Christian Brothers' College there, then Loyola College in Melbourne. He attended the University of Melbourne (MA and PhD); Canisius College in Sydney, and the Jesuit Theological College in Melbourne.[2]
In 1966 Steele joined the English Department at the University of Melbourne, and was appointed to a personal chair in English there[3] in 1993.[1] He went on to become emeritus professor of English at the university after his retirement in 2005.[1]
The poem "Saying" was published in Meanjin Quarterly in March 1965.[4]
Steele became a much published poet, critic, and commentator in books, magazines, and journals.[1]
He was a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities[3] and Lockie Fellow at the University of Melbourne. He was a visiting professor at the University of Alberta, at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and at Loyola University Chicago.[3]
In 2012 he was made a Member of the Order of Australia, for service to literature and higher education as a poet, author, scholar and teacher, and to the Catholic Church.[2] [1]
Other recognition and honours include:
Steele died of liver cancer[1] several years after diagnosis,[5] on 27 June 2012 at Caritas Christi Hospice in Kew, Melbourne, aged 72. He was survived by one brother, Jack.[1]
The Peter Steele Poetry Award, a scholarship available to PhD students at the University of Melbourne,[6] funded by the Peter Steele Poetry Trust Fund, which was established by Susan Crennan AC QC in November 2017.[7] The endowment is supplied by a group of donors, including Susan Crennan, Michael Crennan QC, Allan Myers AC QC, and Maria Myers AC, Peter's brother Jack Steele, and others.[6]
The Peter Steele Poet in Residence is a residency set up in late 2022. The inaugural poet in residence, from January 2023, is Maxine Beneba Clarke.[8]