Harry Hooton

Henry (Harry) Arthur Hooton (9 October 1908 – 27 June 1961) was an Australian poet and social commentator whose writing spanned the years 1930s–1961. He was described by a biographer as ahead of his time, or rather "of his time while the majority of progressive artists and thinkers in Australia lagged far behind". Initially a socialist and "wobbly", he later professed anarchism and became an associate of the Sydney Push during the 1940s, with connections to many other Australian writers, film makers and artists. Hooton's constant attitude and literary style was extravagant, provocative and explicitly outrageous.

Early life Hooton was born in Doncaster, Yorkshire, England. His father was Levi Hooton, a railway shunter, and his mother's maiden name was Margaret Lester-Glaister. He had an older brother, Frank. with fifty-nine other boys. After humping his swag around much of New South Wales and Queensland through the Great Depression, in 1936, just as his first pieces of writing were being published, Hooton was introduced to the poet Marie E. J. Pitt living in Melbourne and carried on a correspondence with her for the next eight years.

Literary development Hooton's first book of poetry, "These Poets", appeared in 1941, published at his own expense in a small print run of up to 400 copies, most of which Hooton either gave away or swapped. It struck a chord with readers, receiving much critical acclaim.

Hooton's "Things You See When You Haven't Got A Gun" was reviewed by Max Harris in one line in the Ern Malley issue of Angry Penguins, "Our anarchist bull careers madly through his intellectual fog." coffee lounge, described by Richard Appleton as the "Mecca of the Australian arts", and the Tudor Hotel. Appleton and others have noted Hooton's opposition to the generally favoured realist philosophy of Professor John Anderson and its activist offshoot, the Libertarian Society.When Anderson's realist philosophy held intellectual sway at Sydney University, Hooton attacked vehemently philosophy and universities (he claimed sometimes that Anderson was his main enemy, although he defended Anderson when he thought he was being wrongly attacked). To a literary world influenced by people such as Joyce, Yeats, Pound and Eliot, Hooton decried them as anti-artists, philistines and charlatans. He admitted only a few people as poets, including Whitman, Wilde and Henry Lawson.

While Hooton was living a very bohemian life in Sydney, he was connecting with literary people in Japan, India, Greece, South Africa, England, France, New Zealand, and the USA. Hooton had corresponded with counter-culture figures in California, and with Tuli Kupferberg who would later form the rock group The Fugs.