AustLit

Somerville was a Sydney poet. He was a graduate of the University of Sydney, and a follower of the University of Sydney philosopher John Anderson. He was acquainted with the writers A.D. Hope, Harry Hooton, James McAuley, Harold Stewart and Garry Lyle (qq.v.), and in 1944 printed on his own small press The First Boke of Fowle Ayres, which contained satirical poems by members of this group. In the same year he also used his small press to print [Number Two] , the second of a series of three untitled booklets of poetry (also known as [Untitled : An Untitled, Unpretentious, Unadvertised and Unusual Selection of Verse]). [Number Two] featured Somerville's poems, as well as those of A.D. Hope and Harry Hooton. He contributed to the University of Sydney periodicals Arna and Hermes. In 1947 he was killed in a car crash, and the poetry booklet [Number Three] contains a tribute to him by Harry Hooton. Somerville is also commemorated in The Education of Young Donald (1967) by Donald Horne (q.v.)