This chapter begins with reference to Les Murray’s impressiveness as a reader of his own work. It illustrates the distinctiveness and variety of Murray’s poetry, celebrating its avoidance of predictable forms, topics and ideas. The chapter also observes the difference in the reception of Murray’s work in the global North and the global South. It points to the ways in which Murray’s poems don’t seem to end in conventional or predictable ways, but seem unending. The chapter discusses ‘The Buladelah-Taree Holiday Song Cycle’ as possibly Murray’s greatest poem, for its all-encompassingness. It cites Murray’s anti-modernism and his membership of the diasporic super-group of English-language poets, including Brodsky, Walcott and Heaney. The chapter concludes with a reflection on how the flavour and nature of Murray’s poetry changed in the last twenty years of his life.

This chapter illustrates the significant role of poetry in both the human experience of the continent of Antarctica and the human response to its unfamiliar icescape. The connections between Australia and Antarctica are geological, historical and cultural, and 40 per cent of Antarctica comprises the Australian Antarctic Territory. Australian poets have figured the continent as blank and cold, while Antarctic explorers have written poetry and held poetry competitions. The chapter discusses the imaginary landscape of Henry Kendall’s seafaring encounter with Antarctica, and Douglas Stewart’s poetic drama about the heroic explorer Robert Falcon Scott. The invitation of Caroline Caddy and Terry Whitebeach to visit Antarctica in the 1990s produced poetry of first-hand experience of Antarctica. Other poets who have written about Antarctica include Dorothy Porter, Les Murray, Anthony Lawrence, Robert Harris and J. R. Rowland.

This chapter begins with reference to the veneration and obscurity that characterises Webb’s reputation. It relates the early Webb’s mentoring by Norman Lindsay and his subsequent rejection of Lindsay’s secular aesthetics and anti-Semitism. Webb’s expatriate years in Canada and then England are discussed as a search for creative independence, although England was the place of his first hospitalisation for mental illness. The chapter observes that some of Webb’s most resonant poems are responses to the East Anglia landscape. It traces Webb’s return to Australia, his continued hospitalisation, and his Catholic devotion. The chapter explores the concept of schizophrenia as a pathology of language to understand Webb’s poetic language, particularly its metaphorical aspects. Lastly, the chapter focuses on Webb’s ‘explorer’ poems, their metaphorics of journeying, and their relationship to Australia’s cultural history, or national mythology, in the late 1950s and 1960s.

This chapter begins its discussion of Australian poetry in the decades immediately following World War II, post-Ern Malley hoax. It identifies the impulse in major poets of this time to establish a canon of Australian poetry that reinforced a strong sense of settler identity. The chapter reflects upon this expansionary period of Australian literary culture, as evidenced by the growth of Australian publishers, literary magazines, government support for the arts, professional networks, and forums for the discussion of poetry. It considers canon-building manoeuvres in light of a deep divide between conservative and left-wing viewpoints. The role of Douglas Stewart and Beatrice Davis, and Angus & Robertson’s Australian Poets Series, is detailed. The chapter also describes the expansion of Australian literary studies as underpinned by the growth of tertiary education. It discusses how a number of poets assumed elevated university positions, encouraging scholarly accounts and criticism of poetry. Lastly, the chapter concludes that the advent of Oodgeroo’s work presented a formidable challenge to this mid century envisioning of a national canon.

This chapter examines the work of a generation of women poets born in the 1860s whose rural childhood became fundamental in shaping their understandings of the intersections between class, gender and nation. Mary Fullerton, Marie E. J. Pitt and Mary Gilmore combined their socialist ideals with first-wave feminism, and Gilmore could become the first woman member of the Australian Workers, Union and participate in the utopic socialist venture to establish a ‘New Australia’ in South America. The chapter critiques the role of nostalgia in the racial blindspots of their vision of social transformation. It also considers the role of literary clubs, feminist periodicals and women’s magazines in encouraging a subsequent generation of women’s voices. With a critique of the institution of marriage, a growing legitimation of professional women writers and the articulation of female desire, there emerged a New Woman who challenged traditional gender conventions and defied divisions of class. The chapter also considers how this newer generation of women revised traditional poetic forms and embraced free verse, but were still limited by what was deemed acceptable for publication.

This chapter considers the work of major First Nations figures in Australian poetry – Oodgeroo, Kevin Gilbert, Mudrooroo and Lionel Fogarty – as well as poetry produced by current or former First Nations inmates of Australia’s prison system or about First Nations deaths in custody. The language of these poets is both politically activist and community enhancing. It argues that the effects of such poetry can be redemptive, empowering or visionary. It considers such poetry as testimony, discussing the ways in which First Nations writers have created a poetic language that might not have been available, which, in turn, creates a community of readers and listeners. For many First Nations prison inmates, poetry becomes a mean to ground Indigenous identity and reflect on their lives and relationships. From the 1990s, poets such as Samuel Wagan Watson, Romaine Moreton, Ali Cobby Eckermann and Yvette Holt have broken new ground with work highlighting Aboriginal selfhood in an evolving Australian society. The chapter concludes with a consideration of a younger and emergent generation of First Nations poets.

Rather than view nineteenth-century Australian poetry as simply imitative of British models, this chapter examines how such poetry explored aspects of time and space in distinctive ways as well as from alternative perspectives. It considers how Charles Harpur conceptualised shifts in temporal scale, how Caroline Leakey questioned positioning and precedence, and how Eliza Dunlop engaged with the idea of distance that extended to aspects of the human condition more generally. It also analyses how writers such as Mary Bailey, Adam Lindsay Gordon, Henry Kendall and R. H. Horne (who lived in Australia for a substantial period) reconfigured classical and English literary traditions through antipodal positions that raised questions around heritage and history. The chapter then discusses women’s navigation of delimiting conventions of authorship. Lastly, the chapter considers how nineteenth-century Australian poetry started to voice nation in an embryonic form.

This chapter considers popular poetry of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It discusses the significance of anonymity in songs and ballads, suggesting that anonymity has an uneasy relation to gender normativity and racial division. The chapter considers both the revolutionary spirit and cautionary message around bushranger ballads and other depictions of colonial outlaws, and their continuing popularity and adaptations in writing, film and music. It then discusses poetic navigations of conditions of British settlement, particularly the use of irony and comic despair. The chapter also considers the authored ballads of the late nineteenth century and the construction of a bush ethos at the expense of the city by poets promoted by The Bulletin. Lastly, it considers the use of the vernacular and the capacity for folk poetry to represent a wide range of lived experiences.

Writers associated with the Ern Malley hoax have often been viewed as dramatically opposed to the Jindyworobaks, with the former looking for transnational connections beyond England to shape their poetics while the latter turned instead towards local culture for distinctiveness. This chapter argues that the Ern Malley hoaxers and their target shared an anti-Britishness while the imagery and sense of Australian place in the Ern Malley poems reveal a shared anxiety with the Jindyworobaks about Australian identity and a nationalist frame. The chapter considers the collaborative nature of the Ern Malley hoax and the group-based nature of the Jindyworobak manifesto, Conditional Culture. It argues that both hoax and manifesto share a similar aim to garner attention. The chapter critiques the reception of both the Angry Penguins and the Jindyworobaks as typically reducing them to one or two figures. Lastly, it contrasts the global attention given to the Ern Malley poems, including ongoing poetic engagement, with the relatively scant attention given to the Jindyworobaks.

This chapter considers the impact of digital technologies on Australian poetry, in both its production and its circulation. It charts Australian endeavours in electronic poetry, pointing out its internationalisation of Australian poetry, exploration of tensions between the global and the local, and caution regarding the dangers of increased surveillance. The chapter then discusses the experimentation with hypertext, interactivity, animation and computer coding, including the creation of a new language by mez (Mary-Anne Breeze). It considers the digital manipulation of words and voice and the poetic use of computerised text generation. It traces developments occurring between literature and game, including the use of virtual reality and 3D environments. The chapter also outlines the impact of machine learning on text generation, including the destabilisation of distinctions between human and machine creativity. After discussing the prevalence of multimedia work, it considers Indigenous digitality before turning to digital publishing such as online journals, databases and ebook publications. The chapter concludes with a reflection on the paucity of attention given to digital works in funding and prize culture.

This chapter discusses how the suburb was initially a source of anxiety and ambivalence, with the city compared unfavourably to the bush in The Bulletin in the 1890s. This was followed by representations of the suburbs as constraining creativity and promoting social and political narrowness in early twentieth-century poetry. Their reconceptualisation would occur at the end of World War II through painting and Ern Malley’s poems, with the latter evoking a sense of the suburban quotidian. The chapter then considers how a Melbourne group of poets began depicting the suburbs with both affection and parodic impulse, often demonstrating how elements of liberation and constraint are experienced simultaneously in such spaces. The chapter also discusses how Aboriginal poets explored suburbia and the uncanny in the late twentieth century. It includes a reconceptualisation of surburban domesticity in poetry by Gwen Harwood before exploring how forms such as the verse novel and the prose poem enabled detailed and linguistically rich engagements with the suburbs. Lastly, the chapter discusses the range of responses to the suburbs by migrant writers.

This chapter begins with the description of Australian poets as expatriates from the beginning of settlement. It argues that a perceived colonial provincialism and the smallness of the Australian market led to several well-known novelists pursuing their career abroad. The reasons for poets leaving Australia have been far more varied. Australian expatriate poets have been both short-term and long-term inhabitants of countries such as Paraguay (Mary Gilmore), England (W. J. Turner, Peter Porter, Clive James, Katherine Gallagher) and the United States (E. G. Moll, Keith Harrison, Ray Matthew, Kevin Roberts, Gail Holst-Warhaft). The chapter considers the influence of music on Porter’s poetry and his poetic meditations on death. It discusses the pursuit of an academic career by Harrison and his writing of particular locations and family relationships. Relatedly, it considers Gallagher’s remembrance of Australia and exploration of family and regeneration through the garden and its flowers. The chapter also appraises the erudition of James and his tribute and critiques of fellow poets. Lastly, the chapter charts the demise of the need for expatriatism in light of advances in travel and digital communication, while outlining the existence of a contemporary diaspora of Australian poets in many countries.

This chapter discusses the concept of the visual imaginary and the visualism apparent across all of Kenneth Slessor’s writing, including his war journalism and poetry. It argues that Slessor’s career as a film writer for the popular press is related to the visualism of his poetry and to the history of cinema in Australia. The chapter analyses the relation between the light effects in Slessor’s poetry and the existential state of the poet, including in the elegiac ‘Five Bells’. It concludes with a discussion on the relation between Slessor’s war despatches about World War II in North Africa and the elegy for the casualties of war.

This chapter traces early migration from Europe during the Gold Rush and the change from multiculturalism to monoculturalism with the advent of the White Australia policy. However, it focuses primarily on first-generation migrant writers from Europe following World War II. The chapter argues that migration should be viewed through the lens of heterogeneity, shaped by geographic, cultural, linguistic and class disparities. The chapter discusses how first-generation migrants existed as ethnic minorities who often experienced hostility and were directed towards manual employment. It examines the emergence of ethnically specific periodicals, following by literary journals, literary and cultural associations, poetry collections, and anthologies. The chapter identifies a predominant theme of nostalgia, with related elements of loss and hope. Another identified theme is social justice, including empathy for the impact of displacement felt by Aboriginal peoples and a support of Aboriginal sovereignty.

This chapter discusses early Chinese writing in Australian Chinese periodicals at the turn of the twentieth century, which was then followed largely by an absence of Asian voices in Australian anthologies until the late 1950s. It critiques the early anthologies that turned attention to Asia as either focusing only on ‘Australian’ perceptions of Asia or separated ‘Australian’ and ‘Asian’ writers along lines of ethnicity. It discusses the publication of poetry collections by Asian Australian poets as occurring in the late 1980s and 1990s and the emergence of Asian Australian studies in the 1990s in light of American Asian studies. It critiques the limitations of an ‘Asian Australian’ framework along with the tendency to homogenise migrant writers under the rubric of multiculturalism in late twentieth-century Australia. It discusses the emergence of literary magazines as forums for Asian Australian writing and as developing cross-cultural solidarities, and anthologies, criticism and writing that has foregrounded diasporic frameworks and intersectionality. The chapter then undertakes analysis of four major recent writers.

This chapter begins with outlining the repeated appeal from non-Indigenous Australians to share in the heritage of First Nations people without recognition of the ongoing impact of colonialism. It argues that one devastating consequence was the loss or endangering of many first languages of Australia. The chapter considers the relationship between poetry, language and Country, described by Alexis Wright as ‘library land’. Foregrounding the immeasurable significance of these archives of land and lived cultural practice, the chapter details the differences between Aboriginal oral traditions and the translation of Indigenous song poetry into a written context. Aboriginal women’s poetry of mourning and lament, milkarri, is discussed, the chapter pointing out that the power of such songs remains with those to whom the songs belong and the Country that has created the songs. It turns attention to attempted translations of Aboriginal song into English by Eliza Dunlop and then more contemporary translations of Indigenous oral traditions, such as John Bradley’s bilingual book co-authored by Yanuwa families, Stuart Cooke’s translation of Kimberley song cycles, and the Queensland University Press bilingual anthologies of Aboriginal song cycles. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the translation history of the Moon Bone cycle.

This chapter considers the role of periodicals, little magazines and literary clubs in fostering communities of Australian poets in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It discusses the importance of such communities in encouraging debate, circulating new poetries and encouraging generative connections between poets. The chapter discusses periodicals such as The Bulletin as a hub for what came to be known as the Bush School of poetry, and Vision that became an instrument for the poetics of the Lindsay circle. Yet it also discusses other little magazines such as The Heart of the Rose, The Triad and Stream. It considers the proliferation of literary clubs, which began as bastions of male homosociality but also began to include women writers or were for women only. It also discusses how periodicals and little magazines drew attention to and encouraged experimentation with new forms and concepts such as Symbolism and Vitalism. The chapter also includes the significance of literary magazines, some of which were supported by or emerged out of universities.

From the Frontier Wars to contemporary conflicts, this chapter considers the role of Australian poetry in shaping understandings of war. It includes early critiques of British command during the Boer War and national mythmaking around Breaker Morant. It then considers the patriotism and propaganda of poetry in World War I and the generation of the Anzac or digger myth in national identity. It considers the role of humour and the vernacular in popular poetry, and writing from the homefront. It traces the change in attitudes as World War I continued and resulted in a heavy loss of Australian lives. The chapter also considers poetry written during World War II and the Vietnam War. It considers how writers experimented with form and imagery to create a vehicle of protest, as well as to navigate disillusionment and loss. The chapter considers poetic engagements with a movement into perpetual war and conflict in the late twentieth century, including the role of media. Lastly, it considers the voices of asylum seekers and the role of poetry in protesting and critiquing government policy around border security.