J.E. Brookes

John Brookes was born in London in 1920. In 1939, he worked his passage to Australia, arriving with two shillings and sixpence in his pocket. On the outbreak of war, he walked 700 miles from Broken Hill to Melbourne to join up. He served with the 2/5th Battalion as a private in the Western Desert and Greece, before being taken prisoner in Crete. He subsequently spent four years in prisoner-of-war camps, where he wrote many of his poems. His early interest in classical poetry gave his poems a discipline and structure that set them apart from the work of many of his contemporaries.