Francis Webb
Francis Webb, born Charles Francis Webb-Wagg on February 8, 1925, in Adelaide, South Australia, was a significant Australian poet known for his complex metaphysical verse. After a troubled childhood marked by the death of his mother and his father's mental health struggles, Webb found solace in literature, particularly the works of nineteenth-century British poets. He served in the Royal Australian Air Force during World War II, which influenced his later writings. Webb published five key volumes of poetry between 1948 and 1964, characterized by intricate structures and rich metaphors, often exploring themes of spirituality and the natural world, with a focus on Australian explorers.
His Catholic faith profoundly impacted his work, encouraging a reverence for the mundane as a reflection of the divine. Despite his literary achievements, Webb faced personal challenges, including a diagnosis of schizophrenia in 1953 that led to years in psychiatric institutions. He continued to write, producing notable works like *The Ghost of the Cock* before his untimely death in 1973. While critically acclaimed, Webb's poetry has largely remained within literary circles, establishing him as a "poet's poet." His exploration of the human condition and spiritual journey resonates with readers interested in the complexities of faith and existence.
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Francis Webb
Poet
- Born: February 8, 1925
- Birthplace: Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
- Died: November 23, 1973
Biography
Francis Webb was born Charles Francis Webb-Wagg on February 8, 1925, in Adelaide, South Australia. His mother died in 1927 and his father, who owned a small music shop, never recovered from the trauma of her death. He sent Webb and his three siblings to their paternal grandparents in North Sydney and would eventually commit himself to a mental facility. In North Sydney, Webb, a lonely child, was educated in Catholic schools. His grandfather had worked for the harbor ferry system and Webb grew enamored of the sea. A voracious reader of nineteenth century British poetry, particularly the dramatic monologues of Robert Browning and the meditation poetry of Gerald Manley Hopkins, Webb began writing his own verse in the early 1940’s. Webb volunteered for service in World War II, joining the Royal Australian Air Force and serving in Manitoba, Canada. After the war, he studied briefly at the University of Sydney but maintained a peripatetic lifestyle, living in both Canada and England.
Between 1948 and 1964, Webb published the five books of verse upon which his reputation rests. The poems, like Browning’s, are less confessional than dramatic, revealing multilayered characters rather than the poet’s emotional autobiography. The poems, structurally intricate, densely metaphoric, and syntactically difficult, are compelled by Webb’s Catholicism. Webb was particularly impressed with his religion’s awareness of the earth as a manifestation of the spiritual plane, a sustained and available act of God’s revelation. Thus, poetry is a vehicle for contemplation, an occasion for the reverence of even the most ordinary things, which ultimately confirms the sacred. Wedded to that sensibility, Webb, reflecting his deep love of his native Australia and his childhood infatuation with the sea, often selected as his characters nineteenth century Australian explorers who had first ventured into the forbidding interior of the continent. Webb uses the journey motif to suggest the rigorous self-explorations toward transcendent revelations that position the self within a complex spiritual cosmos. These visionary poems became a significant part of the midcentury renaissance in Australian literature and the continent’s emerging sense of cultural independence.
While in England in 1953, Webb was diagnosed as a schizophrenic and spent seven years in institutions. He returned to Australia in 1960 and spent the rest of his life in psychiatric hospitals, struggling with his illness. He published two more volumes of poetry, including The Ghost of the Cock (1964), which included a harrowing account of his own hospitalization. He died from a massive heart attack on November 23, 1973, at the age of forty-eight.
His metaphysical poetry, while critically acclaimed for its bold spirituality and its intricate technical achievement, was never embraced by the public; Webb remains a poet’s poet. As a Catholic, a schizophrenic, and an Australian, Webb perceived the vulnerability of the individual and the puniness of the self in a forbidding universe, and he offered as solace the examined interior life that affirmed faith as a stable, organizing energy in a difficult universe.