Fielding Dawson (August 2, 1930 â January 5, 2002, aged 71) was a Beat-era author of short stories and novels, and a student at Black Mountain College. He was also a painter and collagist whose works appeared in several books of poetry and many literary magazines.
Dawson was born in New York City. As a child, his family moved to Kirkwood, Missouri. His father was a journalist. He studied portrait drawing with Tanasko Milovich. In 1949, he enrolled at Black Mountain College. With Robert Rauschenberg and Kenneth Noland, he studied painting with under Franz Kline. He also studied writing with Charles Olson.
Dawson was still writing up until his unexpected death in January 2002. He had become a teacher, first in prisons like Sing Sing, at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, where he taught regularly, and continuing on to work with at-risk students at Upward Bound High School in Hartwick, New York.
Dawson was known for his stream-of-consciousness style. Much of his work was lax in punctuation to emphasize the immediacy of thought. His work has been compared to other Beat poets, including Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg.
He has been called "The Best St. Louis Writer You've Never Read" by David Clewell, a professor of history at Webster University.
Porter Fox has written of Dawson, "Many of his best pieces were short, often autobiographical. Some of the greatest were just a page or two. The writing was plain-faced, without contrived plots, bookish vocabulary, or literary allusions."
Robert Creeley said of his work, "I have never seen a writer capable of such fast shifts, so instantly, nervously exact."
The Fielding Dawson Papers are housed at the library of the University of Connecticut.