Gavin Greenlees was an Australian poet. He was born in Melbourne in 1930. As early as 1943 he had poems appear in the periodical Pertinent

Pertinent (magazine)

Pertinent was an Australian monthly periodical edited by Leon Batt. Contributors included Ian Mudie, Kylie Tennant, William Hart-Smith, the artist Rosaleen Norton and the poet Gavin Greenlees, Dulcie Deamer , Yvonne Webb, George Farwell, Marjorie Quinn, Marien Dreyer, and Robert Crossland...

. He won three successive poetry competitions sponsored by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Australian Broadcasting Corporation

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly referred to as "the ABC" , is Australia's national public broadcaster...

 and his poems later were widely published, notably in the 'Australian Weekend Book'. He experimented with Surrealism

Surrealism

Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....

 and studied Freud, Lautreamont, Rimbaud and James Joyce

James Joyce

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...

 for several years. In 1949 he began studying Jung

Jung

Carl Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist, an influential thinker and the founder of analytical psychology.Jung may also refer to:* Jung * JUNG, Java Universal Network/Graph Framework-See also:...

, Dostoyevsky and Ouspensky and the works of Aleister Crowley

Aleister Crowley

Aleister Crowley , born Edward Alexander Crowley, and also known as both Frater Perdurabo and The Great Beast, was an influential English occultist, astrologer, mystic and ceremonial magician, responsible for founding the religious philosophy of Thelema. He was also successful in various other...

 and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn

Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn

The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was a magical order active in Great Britain during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which practiced theurgy and spiritual development...

.

Greenlees became the lover of the artist Rosaleen Norton

Rosaleen Norton

Rosaleen "Roie" Norton , who used the craft name of Thorn, was an Australian artist and occultist, in the latter capacity adhering to a form of pantheistic Neopagan Witchcraft or Wicca which was devoted to the god Pan...

, almost thirteen years his senior, and they published together The Art of Rosaleen Norton The sexually explicit nature of some of the artwork, led to the publisher being charged with producing an obscene publication, and continued distribution within Australia was only permitted if some of the offending images were obliterated with black ink. U.S.A. customs officers burned imported copies.

From 1955 onwards, Greenlees had many prolonged admissions to psychiatric hospitals in Sydney suffering from hallucinations and paranoia, possibly made worse by his regular use of drugs including amphetamines and LSD

LSD

Lysergic acid diethylamide, abbreviated LSD or LSD-25, also known as lysergide and colloquially as acid, is a semisynthetic psychedelic drug of the ergoline family, well known for its psychological effects which can include altered thinking processes, closed and open eye visuals, synaesthesia, an...

.