Australian
Po e t r y
since 1788
GEOFFREY LEHMANN has published seven collections of his poetry and a Selected
Poems and Collected Poems. He has edited two anthologies of Australian comic verse,
and co-edited (with Robert Gray) two previous anthologies of Australian poetry. He
has also published a novel, two children’s books and Australian Primitive Painters, a
book of art criticism. Lehmann was the first Australian poet to be published by the
London publishing house Faber & Faber. He has been a member of the Literature
Board of the Australia Council. He continues to write as a literary reviewer for The
Australian newspaper and his poems are widely published, most recently in The New
Yorker. He has been a lawyer, specialising in corporate tax, was a partner of the
international accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, co-author of the five editions
of Lehmann & Coleman’s Taxation Law in Australia, and chairman of the Australian
Tax Research Foundation.
ROBERT GRAY has published eight books of poetry, has written a prize-winning
memoir, The Land I Came Through Last (2008), has edited the poetry of John Shaw
Neilson and the journals of the painter John Olsen, and has won numerous awards
for his poetry, including the National Poetry Prize of the Adelaide Arts Festival, the
NSW Premier’s Award, the Victorian Premier’s Award, the Age Book of the Year for
poetry, and the Patrick White Award. His work was a set text for the final high-school
examinations in New South Wales and Victoria for many years. There have been booklength translations of his poetry published in China, Germany and the Netherlands,
and a selected edition and several other volumes of his work have appeared in the
UK. He has been a writer-in-residence in Japan, Germany, China, and Italy, and made
reading tours of Germany, the UK and Ireland. At present, he is a regular reviewer of
poetry for various newspapers.
Visit of Hope to Sydney Cove, near Botany Bay
WHERE Sydney Cove her lucid bosom swells,
And with wide arms the indignant storm repels;
High on a rock amid the troubled air
Hope stood sublime, and waved her golden hair;
Calmed with her rosy smile the tossing deep,
And with sweet accents charmed the winds to sleep;
To each wild plain she stretched her snowy hand,
High-waving wood, and sea-encircled strand.
“Hear me,” she cried, “ye rising realms! record
Time’s opening scenes, and Truth’s prophetic word.
There shall broad streets their stately walls extend,
The circus widen, and the crescent bend;
There, rayed from cities o’er the cultured land,
Shall bright canals, and solid roads expand.
There the proud arch, colossus-like, bestride
Yon glittering streams, and bound the chasing tide;
Embellished villas crown the landscape-scene,
Farms wave with gold, and orchards blush between.
There shall tall spires, and dome-capped towers ascend,
And piers and quays their massy structures blend;
While with each breeze approaching vessels glide,
And northern treasures dance on every tide!”
Then ceased the nymph – tumultuous echoes roar,
And Joy’s loud voice was heard from shore to shore –
Her graceful steps descending pressed the plain,
And Peace, and Art, and Labour, joined her train.
– Erasmus Darwin, 1789
Australian
Po e t r y
since 1788
Edited by
g e o f f r e y l e h m a n n & r o b e r t g r ay
A UNSW Press book
Published by
University of New South Wales Press Ltd
University of New South Wales
Sydney NSW 2052
AUSTRALIA
www.unswpress.com.au
© in this collection, Geoffrey Lehmann and Robert Gray 2011
© in individual poems, the poet or their estate
First published 2011
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the
purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as
permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced
by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be
addressed to the publisher.
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry
Title: Australian poetry since 1788: [electronic resource]/
edited by Geoffrey Lehmann and Robert Gray.
ISBN: 9781742241098 (epub)
ISBN: 9781742245669 (epdf)
ISBN: 9781742243412 (Kindle)
Notes: Includes index.
Subjects: Australian poetry.
Other Authors/Contributors: Lehmann, Geoffrey, 1940–
Gray, Robert.
Dewey Number: A821.008
Design Di Quick
Randolph Stow, John Tranter, Jennifer Maiden, .0., Kevin
Hart, John Kinsella and Tracy Ryan chose not to appear in this
electronic version, but their selected poems can be found in
the hardback edition which can be purchased at http://www.
newsouthbooks.com.au/isbn/9781742232638.htm
UNSW Press Literary Fund
wishes to acknowledge the generous support of Bret Walker SC;
Peter Farrell and the Farrell Family Foundation; and Australian
Unity.
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government
through the Australian Council for the Arts, its arts funding
and advisory body.
Contents
Introduction
Anonymous
William Perrie 19th century
The Old Bark Hut
Two Aboriginal Songs
Van Diemen’s Land
Botany Bay
The Wild Colonial Boy
Adam Lindsay Gordon 1833–1870
Barnett Levy (?)
Henry Kendall 1839–1882
Botany Bay Courtship
Prefatory Sonnets
Bellbirds
The Last of His Tribe
Francis McNamara
(“Frank the Poet”) c. 1810–1861+
from Ye Wearie Wayfarer
The Sick Stock Rider
From the Wreck
A Convict’s Lament on the Death of
Captain Logan
Charlie “Bowyang” Yorke (?)
Charles Harpur 1813–1868
Joseph Furphy (“Tom Collins”)
Dawn and Sunrise in the Snowy
Mountains
A Mid-Summer Noon in the Australian
Forest
Lost in the Bush
A Coast View
A Basket of Summer Fruit
A Flight of Wild Ducks
Anonymous
Bullocky Bill
1843–1912
The Schoolhouse on the Plain
Ada Cambridge 1844–1926
from A Dream of Venice
Despair
Influence
The Physical Conscience
A Promise
The Old Bullock Dray
Anonymous
Charles Thatcher 1831–1878
Stringy-bark and Green-hide
The Banks of the Condamine
Gold-fields Girls
The Queer Ways of Australia
Anonymous
The Old Keg of Rum
Thomas E. Spencer 1845–1910
How McDougal Topped the Score
Mary Hannay Foott 1846–1918
The Myall in Prison
The Waradgery Tribe
Nurse No Long Grief
The Brucedale Scandal
Nationality 116
Where the Pelican Builds
New Country
Harry Morant (“The Breaker”)
Alexander Montgomery
West by North Again
Who’s Riding Old Harlequin Now?
Marcus Clarke 1846–1881
from Preface to Adam Lindsay Gordon’s
Poems
1847–1922
A Curious Reminiscence
1865–1902
Barcroft Boake 1866–1892
My Sundowner
At Devlin’s Siding
Where the Dead Men Lie
Victor Daley 1858–1905
Henry Lawson 1867–1922
John Farrell 1851–1904
Dreams
Anacreon
Alice Werner 1859–1935
Bannerman of the Dandenong
Jack Moses (?) 1861–1945
Click Go the Shears
W. T. Goodge 1862–1909
How We Drove the Trotter
Who Stole the Ponies?
A Bad Break!
The Shearers’ Cook
Mulligan’s Shanty
A Matter of Knack
The Spider by the Gwydir
A. B. Paterson (“The Banjo”)
1864–1941
The Man from Snowy River
Clancy of the Overflow
The Travelling Post Office
Saltbush Bill
How Gilbert Died
A Bush Christening
Waltzing Matilda
Santa Claus in the Bush
The Boss’s Wife
Mary Gilmore 1865–1962
Eve Song
Dedicatory
from Swans at Night
The Hunter of the Black
vi
Andy’s Gone with Cattle
The Roaring Days
Ballad of the Drover
The Teams
Middleton’s Rouseabout
The Captain of the Push
Sweeney
The Lights of Cobb & Co
The Slip Rails and the Spur
The Shakedown on the Floor
Anonymous (possibly Henry
Lawson)
The Bastard from the Bush
Mary Fullerton (“E”) 1868–1946
Emus
E. J. Brady 1869–1952
The Whaler’s Pig
Will Ogilvie 1869–1963
A Bush Night
A Wildflower by the Way
Solitude
The Township Lights
Harry Morant
The Death of Ben Hall
Christopher Brennan 1870–1932
Aubade
The grand cortège …
Let us go down, the long dead night is
done
The years that go to make me man
The Wanderer
A ustralian P oetry S ince 1 7 8 8
O white wind, numbing the world
I said, This misery must end
“Bellerive”(Joseph Tishler)
1871–1957
A Balloon Tragedy
The St. Singer
Outcast Glue-Pot
The Yachts of Hobart
A Rough Restaurant
Jam Factory
The Flying Rat
An Aged Man’s Hideous Escapade
Behind the Curtain of My Art
Tumbler Pigeons
Lines on a Jam Tin
The Dog Car
A Poet’s Reply
The Posey Queen
The Play
An Old Master
Hist!
Hugh McCrae 1876–1958
Song of the Rain
Colombine
I Blow My Pipes
June Morning
The Watchers
The Mouse
Ambuscade
Enigma
P. J. Hartigan (“John O’Brien”)
1878–1952
Said Hanrahan
Frank Wilmot (“Furnley Maurice”)
1881–1942
John Shaw Neilson 1872–1942
The Sundowner
Break of Day
10 Limericks
You, and Yellow Air
Love’s Coming
Nimitybelle
May
The Hour of the Parting
The Orange Tree
Schoolgirls Hastening
The Evening is the Morning
Love in Absence
Eva Has Gone
Concerning Little Waitresses
The Winter Sundown
The Birds Go By
The Diver
Sunday Evening
The Ways of the Wildflower
Say This for Love
Jack Mathieu 1873–1949
That Day at Boiling Downs
“Rita Sunyasee”
Bush Courtin’
C. J. Dennis 1876–1938
The Intro
1914
from The Victoria Markets Recollected in
Tranquility
Winterlight
Whenever I have …
Frederic Manning 1882–1935
Kore
Grotesque
The Face
Relieved
The Sign
Transport
The Trenches
Leaves
“Brian Vrepont” (B.A. Truebridge)
1882–1955
The Net Menders
Ethel Anderson 1883–1958
Afternoon in the Garden
Flood (from Squatter’s Luck)
Waking, child while you slept
Sleeping Soldier
The Garden in June
The Household (from At Rangamatty)
Mariana’s Dairy (from At Rangamatty)
Vance Palmer 1885–1959
contents
vii
The Farmer Remembers the Somme
Dorothea Mackellar 1885–1968
My Country
Magic
Burning Off
Dusk in the Domain
Heritage
The Fire in the Laurel Bush
Harley Matthews 1889–1968
Two Brothers
Women are not Gentlemen
The Return of the Native
James Devaney 1890–1976
Dirrawan, the Song-maker
Song of the Captured Woman
Lesbia Harford 1891–1927
Summer Lightning
Day’s End
Why does she put me to many indignities
Law Student and Coach
Machinist Talking
The Invisible People
Closing Time: Public Library
Periodicity
We climbed that hill
An Improver
Revolution
When I get up to light the fire
Pruning Flowering Gums
Leon Gellert 1892–1977
A Night Attack
Rendezvous
Before Action
In the Trench
These Men
“Rickety Kate” (Minnie Agnes
Filson) 1898–1971
Waratah
Affinity
Via the Bridge
Kenneth Slessor 1901–1971
The Night-Ride
Streamer’s End
viii
Wild Grapes
Dutch Seacoast (from The Atlas)
Captain Dobbin
Five Visions of Captain Cook
The Country Ride
Country Towns
North Country
Last Trams
Out of Time
Five Bells
Beach Burial
R. D. FitzGerald 1902–1987
1918–1941
The Face of the Waters
Fifth Day
The Wind at Your Door
J. A. R. McKellar 1904–1932
Written in the Year of His Bi-centenary
The Retreat from Heaven
Twelve O’Clock Boat
Res Publica
A. D. Hope 1907–2000
The Damnation of Byron
The Return from the Freudian Islands
Three Ecclesiastical Limericks
The Pleasure of Princes
Death of the Bird
Easter Hymn
Moschus Moschiferus
On an Engraving by Casserius
Hay Fever
The Mayan Books
Eve Langley 1908–1974
Native Born
Ronald McCuaig 1908–1993
The Passionate Clerk to his Love
The Surfer
The Commercial Traveller’s Wife
The Letter
Love Me and Never Leave Me
Berceuse de Newcastle
Mrs Agnes McCuaig at the Piano
L’Après-midi d’une Fille aux Cheveux de
Lin
A ustralian P oetry S ince 1 7 8 8
Au Tombeau de mon Père
SONGS OF CENTRAL AUSTRALIA
(T. G. H. Strehlow) 1908–1978
Women’s Verses of Execration
Ndapa Song
Song of the Termite Women of Iloata
Elizabeth Riddell 1910–1998
Wakeful in the Township
Suburban Song
Patrick White, His Day
W. Hart-Smith 1911–1990
Nullarbor
Burning Off
Cyclone
from Man into Trees
Notes in Pencil
Wetlands, Perth
Watercolour
Hal Porter 1911–1984
Alexandra Tea-room
Roland Robinson 1912–1992
Drifting Dug-out
To a Mate
Would I might find my country
The Drovers
Casuarina
The Prisoners
Northern Oriole
Deep Well
Kimberley Drovers
The Fitzroy River Crossing
The Cradle
Yoola and the Seven Sisters, related by
Minyanderri
Mapooram, related by Fred Biggs
The Star-tribes, related by Fred Biggs
The Bunyip, related by Percy Mumbulla
The Sermon of the Birds, related by Alec
Vesper
John Blight 1913–1995
Noddies
Seaweed
Nor’-easter
Death of a Whale
Crab
Ghost Crabs
Fisherman and Jetty
Voices of the Sea
Plankton
Sea-Level
The Shark
The Coral Reef
Shells and Skulls
Stingray Bay
In the Wake of the Ship
And About Phosphorescence
Douglas Stewart 1913–1985
Mending the Bridge
Terra Australis
Sun Orchids
The Sunflowers
Mahony’s Mountain
The Last of Snow
Spider-gums
The Silkworms
B Flat
Two Englishmen
David Campbell 1915–1979
Men in Green
Spring Hares
The End of Exploring
Hogan’s Daughter
Pallid Cuckoo
On Frosty Days
Mothers and Daughters
The Australian Dream
Le Wombat
Head of the River
The Little Grebe
Duchesses
The Secret Life of a Leader
John Manifold 1915–1985
Fencing School 384
Fife Tune 384
The Tomb of Lt. John Learmonth, A.I.F.
385
For Comrade Katharine 387
Chillianwallah Station 387
The Map 388
Elegy I 389
Elegy II 389
contents
ix
Makhno’s Philosophers
David Martin (Lajos or Ludwig
Detsinyi) 1915–1997
Dreams in German
Judith Wright 1915–2000
The Company of Lovers
South of My Days
Woman to Man
The Unborn
The Old Prison
Flame-tree in a Quarry
Country Dance (from The Blind Man)
Train Journey
Flood Year
At Cooloolah
Request to a Year
For One Dying
Halfway
Finale
Small Town Dance
Aboriginal Song Cycles
(Ronald M. Berndt) 1916–1990
Wonguri-Mandjikai Song Cycle of the
Moon-Bone
The Goulburn Island Cycle
Harold Stewart 1916–1995
A Flight of Wild Geese
Haiku Translations
from Senryu – Laughing River-willows
Lingering at the Window of an Inn after
Midnight
James McAuley 1917–1976
Terra Australis
The Incarnation of Sirius
The Death of Chiron
New Guinea
Father, Mother, Son
One Tuesday in Summer
Because
Self-portrait, Newcastle 1942
In The Huon Valley
Explicit
Anne Elder 1918–1976
Horse and Mare
x
Crazy Woman
Singers of Renown
“Ern Malley” 1918–1943
Dürer: Innsbruck, 1495
Documentary Film
Culture as Exhibit
Colloquy with John Keats
Le Petit Testament
Rosemary Dobson 1920–2012
Country Press
The Raising of the Dead
The Bystander
Detail from an Annunciation by Crivelli
The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian
Child with a Cockatoo
Ampersand
Who?
The Green Years
from Poems of a Marriage
1. Empty Spaces
2. Reading Aloud
Gwen Harwood 1920–1995
Suburban Sonnet
New Music
A Music Lesson
A Simple Story
Naked Vision
The Secret Life of Frogs
Homage to Ferd. Holthausen
Mother Who Gave Me Life
The Twins (from Class of 1927)
Bone Scan
Crow-Call
Night and Dreams
On Uncertainty
A Sermon
Oodgeroo Noonuccal
(Kath Walker) 1920–1993
Cookalingee
We Are Going
Dawn Wail for the Dead
Ballad of the Totems
Gifts
Nona
No more boomerang
A ustralian P oetry S ince 1 7 8 8
Lex Banning 1921–1965
Revolver II
Ixion
Five
Bruce Beaver 1928–2004
The Sick Barber
V (from Letters to Live Poets)
XIX (from Letters to Live Poets)
XXIV (from Lauds and Plaints)
Pea Picking
Silo Treading
The Hunting Girl
A Pair
Geoffrey Dutton 1922–1998
Peter Porter 1929–2010
Nan McDonald 1921–1974
The Barren Ground
Burragorang
Dimitris Tsaloumas 1921–
A Finished Gentleman
The Smallest Sprout
Dorothy Hewett 1923–2002
The Hidden Journey
Eric Rolls 1923–2007
The Hare
Meg’s Song and Davie’s Song
The Fox
Emperor Butterfly
Bamboo
Crossing the Surinam River
Dog Fight
Four Poems for Joan
Vincent Buckley 1925–1988
Stroke
Two Funerals
Hunger-strike
Louisa Stewart is Foaling
J. R. Rowland 1925–1996
Canberra in April
Francis Webb 1925–1973
Morgan’s Country
The Gunner
Five Days Old
A Death at Winson Green
Hospital Night
Legionary Ants
Pneumo-encephalograph (from Ward Two)
Harry (from Ward Two)
Alan Riddell 1927–1977
Goldfish at an Angle
At the Hammersmith Palais …
Recessional
A Consumer’s Report
The Sadness of the Creatures
Ode to Afternoon
The Easiest Room in Hell
An Angel in Blythburgh Church
An Exequy
Non Piangere, Liù
What I Have Written I Have Written
Bad Dreams in Venice
Bruce Dawe 1930–
Katrina
Drifters
Homecoming
Phantasms of Evening
The Rock-thrower
At Shagger’s Funeral
Wood-eye
Provincial City
Evan Jones 1931–
Honeymoon, South Coast
Study in Blue
Vivian Smith 1933–
At an Exhibition of Historical Paintings,
Hobart
Early Arrival Sydney
Warmth in July: Hobart
Tasmania
Gabrielle
Barry Humphries 1934–
Ode to the Nine-by-Five
The Pavlova Stamp
The Wattle Park Blues
Threnody for Patrick White
contents
xi
David Malouf 1934–
The Year of the Foxes
Typewriter Music
Seven Last Words of the Emperor
Hadrian
Isn’t …
J. S. Harry 1939–
In Summer
In Light and Darkness
A Wintry Manifesto
The Secular
The Domestic Sublime
The What O’Clock
The Gulf of Bothnia
Hand-Me-Downs
A Page for a Lorikeet
Finding a Destiny that Fits
From HIV to Full-blown …
From Not Finding Wittgenstein:
Circles
They
Kate Llewellyn 1936–
Clive James 1939–
Breasts
In-flight Note
Mudcrab at Gambaro’s
How Come the Truck-loads?
Eskimo Occasion
Johnny Weismuller Dead in Acapulco
Egon Friedell’s Heroic Death
What Happened to Auden
Bring Me the Sweat of Gabriela Sabatini
Occupation: Housewife
The Place of Reeds
Whitman and the Moth
Les Murray 1938–
Peter Steele 1939–2012
Chris Wallace-Crabbe 1934–
Judith Rodriguez 1936–
The Away-bound Train
Driving Through Sawmill Towns
The Ballad Trap
The Broadbean Sermon
The Buladelah-Taree Song Cycle
Bent Water in the Tasmanian Highlands
Equanimity
The Quality of Sprawl
Midsummer Ice (from Three Poems in
Memory of My Mother)
The Dream of Wearing Shorts For Ever
(from The Idyll Wheel)
When Bounty is Down to Persimmons and
Lemons
On Removing Spiderweb
It Allows a Portrait in Line Scan at Fifteen
The Conversations
Jas H. DukE 1939–1992
Sherlock Holmes
Alekhine and Junge at Prague
Dark Night at Ballarat Railway Station
1942
When I was young …
The Real Hero of Eureka 2
Presentations
xii
Confluences
Ape
San Sepolcro
Invisible Riders
Praying with Christopher Smart
Brother
Pomegranate
Rehearsal
Geoffrey Lehmann 1940–
Summer Night
Fall of a Greek City
Pear Days in Queensland
from Roses
Parenthood
The Golden Wall (from Spring Forest)
The Animals (from Spring Forest)
Father and Sons
Self Portrait at 62
Jan Owen 1940–
The Visitation
Blue Bowl
Left
Our Lady
A ustralian P oetry S ince 1 7 8 8
Geoff Page 1940–
Bondi Afternoon 1915
Inscription at Villers-Bretonneux
Cassandra Paddocks
Grit
Grand Remonstrance
My Mother’s God
The Sky
Comparisons
Andrew Taylor 1940–
The Nocturne in the Corner Phonebox
Developing a Wife
Slide Night
Nigel Roberts 1941–
The Quote from Auden
Reward / For a Missing Deity
Art History
The Gulls’ Flight
A Nigger and Some Poofters
The House Special
Robert Adamson 1943–
5 (from Sonnets to be Written from
Prison)
My House
My First Proper Girlfriend
The Gathering Light
Father’s Day
Cornflowers
The Goldfinches of Baghdad
A Visitation
My Grandfather’s Ice Pigeons
Caroline caddy 1944–
Study of a Squid
The Great Whales
Bamboo
Robert Gray 1945–
Flames and Dangling Wire
Diptych
16 Short Poems
The Life of a Chinese Poet
In Departing Light
A Bowl of Pears
The School of Venice
Mark O’Connor 1945–
Reef
The Beginning
Turtles Hatching
A Cuttlefish Bone
The Olive Tree
Sandy Fitts 1946–
Waiting for Goya
Alex Selenitsch 1946–
Delta
from Lightning
from Weeds
Gary Catalano 1947–2002
Signs
The Bone
A River and Some Hills
Australia
Workmen
Gallery Days
“The best Corots …”
Translation
Martin Johnston 1947–1990
Vernal Equinox (from Uncertain Sonnets)
The typewriter considered as a bee-trap
6 The Café of Situations (from In Transit:
A Sonnet Square)
The Scattering Layer
Peter Kocan 1947–
Cricket
Wheelchair Cases
Retards
Cows
Johnson and Garrick Leave Lichfield
Cathedral Service
Tyburn
Rhyll McMaster 1947–
Within Creation
The Acquaintance
Crab Meat
Shaking the Flame
Tile Table
Profiles of My Father
Woman Crossing the Road
from My Mother and I Become Victims
of a Stroke
contents
xiii
The Shell
Arrogant Animals
Arachnophobia 798
Homer Rieth 1947–
The Dining Car Scene in North by
Northwest
A Day in the Backyard Thinking About
Duns Scotus
John Anderson 1948–1997
from the forest set out like the night
Dennis Haskell 1948–
For Thomas Hardy
One Clear Call
The Raising of the Cross
Kate Jennings 1948–
Kathleen Marie Flynn
Assassin
Tony Lintermans 1948–
A Bone from the Misty Days
John A. Scott 1948–
Man in Petersham
Samba (from After the Dance)
Plato’s Dog
A Visit from the Doctors
Alex Skovron 1948–
On the Theology of Ants
The Guilt Factory
The Centuries
The Colours
Kandukur
Alan Wearne 1948–
On the Road to Gundagai
The Argonaut’s Theme
Knox City: a Ballad
Poem for Cathy Coleborne
Kevin Brophy 1949–
Forty-five Years on a Bicycle
Walking Towards Sunset
Difficult
Painters
After Rain
xiv
A Dictionary of Sentences
Jennifer Compton 1949–
The Woman of Rome
Brick
Octopus Speaking
Electric Fan
Cut Your Cloth
Laurie Duggan 1949–
from The New Australian Poetry,
Now!
South Coast Haiku
Blue Hills 23
Blue Hills 44
Blue Hills 52
Blue Hills 53
Blue Hills 55
Blue Hills 64
Boredom (after Ardengo Soffici)
Rainbow (after Ardengo Soffici)
Alan Gould 1949–
Galaxies
Tightrope Walker
Rain Governs the Small Hours
The First Real Frost
Demolisher
Lacemaker
Pliers
Jamie Grant 1949–
Digging Machine
Social Behaviour of Minted Peas
Mon Père est Mort
The Rime of the Ancient Cricketer
Getting a Girl into Bed
Hands
DFC
Susan Hampton 1949–
The Kitchen of Aunty Mi and Aunty Pearl
Stockton
Yugoslav Story
The Fire Station’s Delight
Stranded in Paradise
Cunningly Downwards
Martin Harrison 1949–
Stopping for a Walk in Reserved Land
 A ustralian P oetry S ince 1 7 8 8
near Murra Murra
Remembering Floodwater
John Jenkins 1949–
Philip Salom 1950–
The Song of Hair
The Family Fig Trees
Cold Press
Andrew Sant 1950–
Philip Neilsen 1949–
Homage to the Canal People
Pencils
Nightfall
Roy Orbison in Germany
Les A. Murray versus John Tranter at the
Sydney Cricket Ground
Metamorphosis
Vicki Raymond 1949–
Don’t Talk About Your Childhood
The People, No
On Seeing the First Flasher
King Pineapple
Roaring Beach
Translations of TwentiethCentury Aboriginal Songs
Combing Her Hair
The Red Gown
The Spirit Song about Lake Eyre
Into the Waves
Little Eva at Moonlight Creek
Arriving at the Jetty
Deaf to the Conch Shell’s Call
The Wind and the Turtle
The Trepang Gatherers
His First Trousers
Morning Glories
Oh! To Be a Bird
The First Rabbit
Sulphur-crested Cockatoo
John Forbes 1950–1998
Four Heads & How To Do Them
Breakfast
To the Bobbydazzlers
Rrose Selavy
Drugs
Europe: a guide for Ken Searle
Death: an Ode
Love Poem
Ode to Karl Marx
Warm Snipers
Lassu in Cielo
Anzac Day
Stephen Edgar 1951–
Destiny
The Secret Life of Books
Sun Pictorial
Another Country
English as a Foreign Language
Nocturnal
How Long Have You Been Having
These Feelings?
Oswald Spengler Watches the Sunset
Peter Goldsworthy 1951–
To Poetry
My Last Rabbit
The Blue Room
Nocturne
A Statistician to His Love
Suicide on Christmas Eve
Roy G. Biv
Robert Harris 1951–1993
Tobacco
The Call
The Wish
High & Low
Riding Over Belmore Park
Six Years Old
Bush Cemetery
Ania Walwicz 1951–
travelling
Ian McBryde 1953–
Stalingrad Briefing, 1943
Beyond Omerta
Andrew Lansdown 1954–
Four Men
The Grasshopper Heart
A Good Night
The Muff Bees
contents
xv
Warrior-Monk
Lighting a Match
When Years Take the Stars Away
Two Times Tables
Clays Bookshop – Kings Cross
Dorothy Porter 1954–2008
from El Dorado
Mark O’Flynn 1958–
Jennifer Harrison 1955–
The Stillness of Cows
Peasoup
Chemotherapy
Outrider
Arriving
Changzhuo’s Bees
Hand, Chainsaw and Head
Peter Rose 1955–
Ladybird
Morbid Transfers
Judith Beveridge 1956–
The Domesticity of Giraffes
Making Perfume
Orb Spider
The Dung Collector
Bahadour
Dog Divinations
Elizabeth Hodgson 1956–
from Skin Paintings
Gig Ryan 1956–
If I Had a Gun
When I consider
Heroic Money
Anthony Lawrence 1957–
The Drive
Whistling Fox
from Two Poems
The Language of Bleak Averages
The Deep Scattering Layer
Hammering at Clouds
The Linesman
Sarah Day 1958–
A Hunger to Be Less Serious
Stern Woman
Hens
Carol Jenkins 1958–
Fishing in the Devonian
Cloud Me
xvi
Philip Hodgins 1959–1995
The Birds
Walking through the Crop
Chopped Prose with Pigs
Shooting the Dogs
So-and-so’s Famous Poem
The Meaning
The Drinkers
Midday Horizon
Woman with an Axe
Two Dogs
The Last Few Days and Nights
Wordy Wordy Numb Numb
Mike Ladd 1959–
Last Thoughts of a Famous Dog
Jordie Albiston 1961–
The Fall
Playground Without Children
Alison Croggon 1962–
The Elwood Organic Fruit and Vegetable
Shop
Ode
Emma Lew 1962–
Detail for a Lily Scheme
Ghetto Poem
They Flew Me in on the Concorde from
Paris
Caught in the Act of Admiring Myself
Berchtesgaden
Snow and Gold
Light Tasks
Nous
Craig Sherborne 1962–
The Poem
A Racing Life
Trophy Hair
Race Day
 A ustralian P oetry S ince 1 7 8 8
Suburban Confidential
Brett’s Mum
Plastic Flowers
Ash Saturday
Voyage
Woman and Dog
Older Sister
Notes for the Time Being
Tricia Dearborn 1963–
Aidan Coleman 1976–
The Pouch of Douglas
Schlieren Lines
At the Laundromat on Rue St Florent
Come In, Lie Down
The Changes
I Like Airports
Estates
Allnighter
Lucy Dougan 1966–
The Quilt
Kindergarten Story
Woman Bird Woman
Greg McLaren 1967–
Stephen McInerney 1976–
A Summer Morning, Sydney
Ideas for a Way of Life
Emma Jones 1977–
Waking
Farming
Conversation
Greyhounds at Dusk
Elizabeth Campbell 1980–
Plunge (from The Darwin Poems)
Coralline (from The Darwin Poems)
Marriage (from The Darwin Poems)
Proverb
Illuminations
Equus
Structure of the Horse’s Eye
Bronwyn Lea 1969–
L. K. Holt 1982–
Original Sin
Girls’ Night on Long Island
Bronwyn Lea
Women of a Certain Age
Born Again
Cheap Red Wine
Standing in Bette Davis’s Shoes
Why I Write
Grandmoth A Problem of Filing
Poem for Nina
Dear Little Bastard Antoshevu,
5.
Emily Ballou 1968–
Jemal Sharah 1969–
Kristallnacht
A Small Song
Old Legend
Josephine Rowe 1984–
In the Boot of Someone’s Car
Acknowledgments
Index of poets
Jane Gibian 1972–
Vessels for the Lapse of Time
Lisa Gorton 1972–
Graffiti
Beauty
Solitaire
Petra White 1975–
Ricketts Point
contents
xvii
Introduction
A pleasure-seeking audience is the only audience for poetry worth
having, Philip Larkin has said. This was the guiding principle in making our
anthology. We wanted a book that could be lived with over a lifetime, a physical
object to be picked up with pleasure and still able to surprise many years after it
was purchased.
We sat down to work on the anthology with a cleared desk and a determination
to experience everything published in Australian poetry; or to read it again, since
most of it was already known to us: we have each been involved with this subject
for at least 50 years.
The character of Australian poetry is the result of unique influences. There is,
above all, the landscape: so immense, so relatively empty, so various, so strange
to Europeans, with only the apparently light touch upon it of the Aboriginal
people. The newcomers wanted to write their presence on this continent, and
hence Australian poetry has been much concerned with nature. The uniqueness
of the country has meant that poets here have concentrated in their work not
so much on formal innovation, until recently, but on the peculiar content of the
land itself, which has provided originality enough. Consequently, for a long time
Australian poetry took the quatrain form of the ballad as almost synonymous with
poetry: the form has been as ubiquitous in Australian poetry as the heroic couplet
in eighteenth-century English verse. Contributing to such a preference was the
prevalence of the Scots and Irish among the early European arrivals, with their love
of their folk traditions and of recitation. There followed the immense popularity
in the 19th century of the native-born balladeers, such as Gordon, Paterson, and
Lawson, whose work everyone knew something of by heart.
Wanting to be objective in our choices – since all is lost if one doesn’t endeavour
to inhabit at least the edges of objectivity – we have found that we mainly judged
poetry by a readily comparative measure, by its use of the techniques of poetry.
Poetry is, to a large extent, defined by poetry and judged by poetry. Of course,
content is what is most moving in a poem; but the language first has to be effective.
A good poem is appreciated at least as much as poetry as it is as message. Content
is often subjectively weighted for the reader. We make mistakes most readily, in
1
choosing poems, when we allow ourselves to choose on the basis of subject, so we
have been wary of humanist homily, of uplift, and of the politically right-minded.
What we looked for, instead, were the marks of poetry: imagery, rhythm,
musical texture, aphoristic phrasing, mastery of form, and an original tone of voice
(something that the poet can seldom hear accurately for him or her self, and can
do least about). Conversely, we were not dissuaded by work whose content we
disagreed with (except for the sentimental and its obverse, the sadistic). Liberal
humanists ourselves, we have been affected by the work of communist and
Catholic. We were attracted to all the manifestations of poetry, from concrete
poems to prose poems, from the cerebral to the naïve, from the humorous to the
confessional, and from formal to free verse – anything that persuaded us it was
well done.
The extended critical biographies that introduce the more established poets’
selections seemed necessary, because, by providing the context in which the work
was made, they deepen appreciation. Biographical and historical criticism seems to
us inevitable, so long as it is sensibly restrained. Keats’s poem “To Autumn” gains
in emotional effectiveness if one knows that he was dying of TB at the time it was
written. To take extreme examples in this book, it is necessary to know that Francis
Webb was confined in hospitals for long periods and was schizophrenic when his
doctor trusted him to hold his five-day old baby. Or that Philip Hodgins, at the
time he wrote his poems, was terminally ill with leukemia.
There is, of course, the danger of biographical and sociological commentary
leading to poetry being used merely to illustrate theories or fashionable causes.
This philistinism has been fully realised, particularly in the way poetry is taught
in schools. The poem is an aesthetic and expressive object, and extra-literary
information is simply a means to its appreciation.
Many of the poems here will only survive in anthologies (or else by drifting
unselected in cyber space), since their authors have not written enough outstanding
work to warrant republication of their books. Yet, it should be said that the single
poem, or handful of poems, by these writers we have often found to be among
our best inclusions. Countering a common complaint about anthologies, we have
included a number of longer pieces. The space they required does not necessarily
mean we consider them more significant than shorter poems.
The editors of this book were not involved in the selection of their own poetry.
Each editor chose the poems of the other.
Many have helped us with this anthology. In particular we thank for their
support and patience Kathy Bail, Heather Cam, Heather Champion, Phillipa
McGuinness and Di Quick of UNSW Press.
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 A ustralian P oetry S ince 1 7 8 8
Two Abor iginal Songs (Anonymous)
Over the last thirty years, anthologies of Australian poetry typically begin with
Aboriginal poems, to acknowledge what Les Murray has called “the senior
culture”. We were surprised to discover this practice began with A. B. Paterson’s
Old Bush Songs (1905).
We preface our anthology with the two Aboriginal songs with which he opened
his collection. He provided this comment: “These songs were supplied by Mr S.
M. Mowle, a very old colonist, with much experience of the blacks fifty years ago.
He writes – ‘I could never find out what the words meant, and I don’t think the
blacks themselves knew.’ Other authorities, however, say that the blacks’ songs
were very elaborate, and that they composed corroborees which reached a high
dramatic level.”
The Aboriginal presence is much stronger in Australian poetry than the
Amerindian presence in North American poetry in English. One reason may be
that Europeans settling in Australia were forced to see Australia to some extent
through Aboriginal eyes, because of the radically different nature of the Australian landscape, its fauna and flora. Australia appeared a strange place to European
eyes and the early settlers were happy to borrow Aboriginal words to name places
and animals.
It is interesting that in the two Aboriginal songs below, the same word may
appear several times, sometimes with the ending of the word varied. The repetitions suggest that perhaps there is some form of parallelism, as in the Hebrew
psalms. This is the case with other Aboriginal songs that appear in translation
later in this volume. No words are common to both songs. Are they in different languages? These poems, in their mysterious presence, signify the immemorial
Aboriginal voice of the country.
Two Aboriginal Songs
I
Korindabriã, korindabriã, bogaronã, bogaronã. Iwariniang iwaringdo,
iwariniang, iwaringdo, iwariniang, iwaringdo, iwariniang, iwaringdo,
iwaringime. Iwaringiang. iwaringdõõ, ilanenienow, coombagongniengowe,
ilanenienow. coombagongiengowé, ilanenienowe combagoniengowé,
ilanenienimme.
II
Buddha-buddharo nianga, boomelanã, bulleranga, crobinea, narnmalã,
yibbilwaadjo nianga, boomelanã, a, boomelana, buddha-buddharo, nianga,
boomelana, buddharo nianga, boomelana, bullerangã, crobineã, narnmala,
yibbilwaadjo, nianga, croilanume, a, croilangã, yibbilwaadjo, nianga,
croilanga, yibbilwaadjo, nianga croilangã. coondheranea. tabiabina,
boorganmala, yibbilwaadjo, nianga, croilanoome.
3
Van Diemen’s Land (Anonymous)
“Van Diemen’s Land” is justly the most famous convict ballad. It exists in many
different versions. Rather than choose a particular one, we decided to combine
the best of four variations. Two of the versions we considered had England as the
home country of the three poachers, and used English names and references, and
the other two had the poachers coming from Ireland. In general, our composite
is based on the version in Russel Ward’s The Penguin Book of Australian Ballads
(1964) as being the liveliest and most idiomatic. In the ballad, all three men
were sentenced under a law specifying transportation to Van Diemen’s Land for
fourteen years, if such a group was found together in a wood, and one had a gun
or bludgeon (Old Bush Songs, edited Warren Fahey and Graham Seal (2005) at
page 55). There was much public sympathy for poachers; this was widely regarded
as a crime from the gentry’s viewpoint only. In fact, few convicts were transported
for poaching.
Van Diemen’s Land
Come, all you gallant poachers, that ramble free from care,
That walk out of a moonlight night, with your dog, your gun, and snare;
Where the lusty hare and pheasant you have at your command,
Not thinking that your last career is on Van Diemen’s Land.
Poor Thomas Brown from Nenagh Town, Jack Murphy, and poor Joe,
We was three daring poachers, as the gentry well does know;
One night we was trepanned, my boys, by keepers hid in sand,
And for fourteen years transported was unto Van Diemen’s Land.
The first day that we landed upon that fatal shore,
The planters they came flocking round, full twenty score or more;
They ranked us up like horses, and sold us out of hand,
And they yok’d us up to to ploughs, brave boys, to plough Van Diemen’s
Land.
There was a girl from Dublin Town, Rosanna was her name,
For fourteen years transported was, for playing of the game.
Our planter bought her freedom, and he married her out of hand;
She gave to us good usage upon Van Diemen’s Land.
The huts that we must live in are built of sods and clay,
With rotten straw for bedding and we dare not to say nay.
Our cots we fence with fire, we slumber when we can,
To drive away the dogs and tigers upon Van Diemen’s Land.
Oh! oft when I am slumbering, I have a pleasant dream:
A-lying in old Ireland beside some purling stream,
With my true love upon my side, and a jug of ale in hand,
But I wake a brokenhearted man all in Van Diemen’s Land.
4
God bless our wives and families, likewise that happy shore,
That isle of sweet contentment which we shall see no more.
As for our wretched females, see them we seldom can,
There’s twenty to one woman upon Van Diemen’s Land.
So all you jolly poacher lads, this warning take from me:
I’d have you quit night-walking and to shun bad company,
Throw by your dogs and snares, to you I do speak plain,
For if you knew our hardships you would never poach again.
Botan y Bay (Anonymous)
“Botany Bay” was a stage song in the 1880s, long after transportation of convicts
had ceased, but is likely to have an earlier origin. The version we use is from Russel
Ward’s The Penguin Book of Australian Ballads, which seems preferable to that
in Stewart and Keesing’s edition of Old Bush Songs. Ward notes that “rum-culls”
means “old mates in crime”. The Old Bailey is the Central Criminal Court in
London.
Botany Bay
Farewell to old England for ever,
Farewell to our rum-culls as well;
Farewell to the well-loved Old Bailey
Where I used for to cut such a swell.
Chorus
Singing too-ra-lie, too-ra-lie, addity,
Singing too-ra-lie, too-ra-lie, aye,
Singing too-ra-lie, too-ra-lie, addity,
We’re sailing for Botany Bay.
’Taint leaving Old England we cares about,
’Taint ’cause we mis-spells what we knows;
But because all we light-fingered gentry
Hops around with a log on our toes.
There’s the captain as is our commandier,
There’s the bosun and all the ship’s crew,
There’s the first and the second class passengers
Knows what we poor convicts goes through.
For fourteen long years I’m transported,
For fourteen long years and a day,
Just for meeting a cove in the alley,
And stealing his ticker away.
5