That phrase, Alison, makes me chuckle. We don't want chauvinism in literature,
but Gwen Harwood seems more than a Tasmanian poet and you more than a Victorian.
When I came to Australia after four years in Scotland, and twenty five years in
New Zealand, I realized I was being exposed to my third regional or national
literary culture with its anxieties about the relationship with London.
The first evening I spent at Melbourne University in late 1967, or early 1968, I
noticed how the current 'names' in poetry were never introduced at a reading as
mere poets but as Australian poets. I asked about this, and without anyone
saying so sensed there was something defensive in the phrase, related to the
talk then about a 'cultural cringe' which once-colonial cultures exhibit in
relation to the metropolis.
Scotland has a long famous history of debating how Scottish poets stand in
relation to their country and to 'English' poetry.
At least there the long history of Scots language gave poets there in the
twentieth century a range of choices - 'pure' English as Edwin Muir chose, or as
his contemporary Hugh MacDiarmid (born Chris Grieve) chose: a rich version of
vernacular Scots, beefed up with dictionary reading. Both achieved highly,
though late McDiarmid lapsed into standard English.
(BBC Glasgow in the 1960s however used voices almost unidentifiable as Scots.
That was then, and the diversity of voices more recently is welcome.)
As a student and would-be poet in New Zealand up to 1963, I warmed to the older
generation of NZ writers who spoke of acclimatizing poetry to the new
environment. When I heard of Australia's Jindyworobak movement I respected their
dream of a nativistic culture, though some of the practitioners committed wacky
poems in their effort.
The models for all new literatures in an old language had better be Irish and
American, because of the greatness of their writers.
Yeats showed NZ poets and Australians how they needed to acculturate themselves
to the home country before they 'reached out to the universal'.
FOMatthiessen's book 'American Renaissance', focusing on Emerson, Hawthorne,
Melville, and pointing on towards Twain, and Marius Bewley's 'The Complex Fate',
taking up James's phrase about Hawthorne, seemed to show how attention to the
life and language of the knowable communities you come up through was
fundamental.
Your first audience is local, and if things go well larger audiences may warm to
you.
It had better not be legislated for, of course!
And it would be a foolish young poet who didn't read very widely.
The language of Australians deserves being registered by writers. Its rhythms
may even be detectable in some poems by Australians. Peter Porter, once thought
of as an expatriate, has said he was told in England that his pentameters were
unEnglish.
Oh I haven't got to the heart of the matter.
Max
(like the late Wm Hart-Smith, a poet of two countries)
Quoting Alison Croggon <[log in to unmask]>:
> Out of curiosity: (and also because I am writing an essay and am
> coming up hard against this one)
>
> What do you think when you see or hear the phrase "Australian poetry"?
> What does it call up? Does it mean anything at all?
>
> --
> Editor, Masthead: http://www.masthead.net.au
> Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
> Home page: http://www.alisoncroggon.com
>
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