One of my brothers is on the U3A committee in his home town in the UK. Recently he was leading a discussion on poetry. He asked me about Australian poets and poetry: who were the best? which pieces would I recommend for study by an English U3A discussion group?
My immediate response was something like panic. I could name very few contemporary Australian poets (Judith Wright, Les Murray) and none of their works. The near-panic was the result of a sense of shame and disappointment. Given the time I have on my hands and the extraordinary accessibility these days of ‘information’, how could I not know about and follow certain poets?
How could I think of myself as a responsible citizen of Australia if there is no poetry in my life? Poetry is an important segment of a nation’s culture. It is a field where emotions are not just permissible but essential. There is beauty in poetry. It consists of bunches of words in particular sequences, and I have always found this fascinating.
A bit later I reflected on how my own ignorance is perhaps symptomatic of the status of the arts in Australia. (This was before I had discovered Jacket, the splendid on-line journal founded by John Tranter, recently deceased. It is now published as Jacket2.) The arts sector in Australia is underfunded and under celebrated. Whereas, as a nation, Australia punches above its weight in such things as Olympic sports and certain scientific inventions, it does not in the fine arts.
The two best-known Australian poets are still, I suppose, Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson. They are often paired together because of the similarity of their works. Both wrote what are called ballads, with regular rhythm, scansion and rhyming patterns. (My own doggerel uses similar rhythmic and rhyming patterns.)
Both of them wrote about ‘characters’ living in the bush. Many people are unable to distinguish their works, the one from the other. As an example, ask an Australian whether Waltzing Matilda was written by Lawson or Paterson.
The best known works of Lawson and Paterson include: Waltzing Matilda; The man from Snowy River; Andy’s gone with cattle; Faces in the street (a favourite of mine), Mulga Bill’s Bicycle; The drover’s wife; Clancy of the Overflow; and The Geebung Polo Club .
When it comes to the most famous (and over-used) piece of Australian poetry of all, Lawson and Paterson must give way to Dorothea Mackellar (1885-1968). Core of My Heart was first published in the London Spectator on 5 September 1908. It reappeared several times in Australia before being included as My Country in The Closed Door and Other Verses (Melbourne, 1911). The second verse reads:
I love a sunburnt country, A land of sweeping plains Of ragged mountain ranges Of droughts and flooding rains.
My brother and I discussed the meaning of ‘doggerel’ and whether it is distinct from poetry. We won’t go there again now. Suffice it to say that it would be brave of someone to suggest that Core of my Heart is doggerel.
Scholars would, I think, agree that Judith Wright (1915-2000)and Kenneth Slessor (1901-1971) are true Australian poets of substance.
Judith Wright was from Armidale. (There is a Wright College at the University of New England.) She is best known for The Generations of Men, the story of her family’s early days as land settlers in New South Wales and Queensland. This was published in 1959.
In the years that followed there was a huge shift in the understanding of the white settlers’ impact on the Aboriginal people and the original landscape. Armed with what she described as “a sense of horror at what had happened”, Judith Wright wrote A Cry for the Dead, published in 1981. In that book Wright recognised the real story and the Indigenous voices of the traditional owners of the land her ancestors had settled.
This is right now a very divisive and emotive issue, centred around the Referendum on Indigenous recognition in the Constitution. Wright’s personal learning and reconciliation can be regarded as an elite example of the re-learning, or truth-telling, that is needed for all Australians.
Perhaps the fact that Judith Wright is regarded as one of Australia’s best poets but is arguably better known for her novels than her poetry says something about the standing of poetry in Australia.
One of Kenneth Slessor’s highly regarded pieces is Five Bells. I find it hard to see clear, immediate meaning in the poem, but the collection and juxtaposition of images is telling. So perhaps it would be a good piece to study?!
Les Murray, who died in 2019, was considered the leading poet of his generation. In An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow Murray portrays a crying man as representing the ability to deeply feel and openly express emotion—something that has been stifled by the busy modern world.