Biography John Streeter Manifold

Poet Biography

John Streeter Manifold, 1915-1985, was born in Melbourne and educated at Geelong Grammar School and Cambridge University. After graduating with a degree in modern languages (French and German), he worked as an editor-translator for a German publisher. With the outbreak of the Second World War, he returned to England and served in British army intelligence.

Manifold joined the Communist Party while at Cambridge and on his return to Australia with his English wife in 1949 he settled in Brisbane, Queensland and became active in the cultural and political life of the Party. He helped found the Realist Writers Group in 1950 and worked extensively in the teaching and performance of music, the manufacture of instruments and the collection and publication of Australian ballads and folk music. His publications in this area include Who Wrote the Ballads?: Notes on Australian Folksong (1954), The Violin, the Banjo and the Bones: An Essay on the Instruments of Bush Music (1957) and, as editor, the Queensland Centenary Pocket Songbook (1959) and the Penguin Australian Song Book (1964).

Manifold published his poems and verse translations in a wide variety of journals and magazines; his collections of verse include Verses 1930-1933 (1933), The Death of Ned Kelly and Other Ballads (1941), Selected Verse (1946), Nightmares and Sunhorses (1961), Op 8 (1971), Collected Verse (1971) and On My Selection (1983) which included some new work.