Laurence Collinson

Laurence Henry Collinson (7 September 1925 – 10 November 1986) was a British-Australian playwright, actor, poet, journalist, artist, secondary school teacher and counsellor. He was also a gay man and an LGBTQI rights activist who, throughout his life, advocated for homosexual law reform,

Biography Collison was born in Leeds and, in 1930, when he was 2 years old the family immigrated to New Zealand, where they settled for a short time in Auckland before moving again to Australia. By around 1937 they had settled in Brisbane where Collison attended Brisbane State High School. they grew in sophistication and eventually published the literary avant-garde in Adelaide and Melbourne.

Charles Osborne, who also worked, on the magazine and noted that Collinson's contributions had a combative and melancholy style and recalled that, of this, Collison said `those born in a great Depression and growing up into a World War would not ever have much humour’. He viewed himself as an outsiders and he was Jewish, homosexual and communist.

In addition to the magazine Collinson and Reid also organised the Barjai group which met regularly with writers throughout the region including Clem Christesen. He was contemptuous of that society and said of it:

The group which formed the Miya Studio cultivated a loosely expressionistic style, which was reflected in Collinson's own, and they formed close associations with notable artists Sidney Nolan and Charles Blackman.

In 1957 he published The Moods of Love, a book of poetry and in 1961 won an award for his play The Zelda Trio. At Inter-Action it was selected as a part of their Homosexual Acts season, where it opened on 10 March 1975, at the Almost Free Theatre. Despite this success he still had to maintain paid work and was a sub-editor for a magazine publisher.

Collinson died in London on 10 November 1986.

Select credits Nude with Violin (1965) A Slice of Birthday Cake (1964) The Trapper

Select publications The Moods of Love, Edwards & Shaw, 1957 Who is wheeling Grandma?, Edwards & Shaw, 1967 Cupid's Crescent, Grandma Press, 1973 (self-published) Hovering narcissus: poems, Overland, 1977