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.

This chapter examines the early colonial imaginary of Australia. It demonstrates how there was no unified perception of the land but rather movement between utopic and dystopic visions, often according to audience. The chapter discusses poetic speculation on the expansion of empire into what was viewed as the ‘New World’ and the publicising of the colony as a space of pastoral idyll for prospective emigrants. It also considers the negative depictions of Australia as a penal colony, particularly through broadside ballads that were popular among the working class. Lastly, the chapter analyses the representation of female convicts and the adaptation of the eclogue form by Robert Southey.

The history of poetry in Australia is a history of languages and nations. This volume provides multiple perspectives on that history. Literary histories are always full of contention and this is especially so in Australia where the political and social reality of nation is itself in contention. Poetry was an influential medium through which the structure, experiences and values of settler colonialism and then nationhood were articulated and debated. But it was also complicit in the unconscious assumption of terra nullius in the language of settlement. This is not, then, a history of the untroubled development of a nation and its poetic traditions, but of deep and ongoing debates over language, aesthetic paradigms, land ownership, and cultural and spiritual life. History emerges through documents and narration of ‘the past’; it is part of what Lisa Lowe calls ‘the economy of affirmation and forgetting that structures and formalises the archives of liberalism, and liberal ways of understanding’. Poetry is also part of this economy yet can, perhaps more than any other genre, approach that which eludes the archive or exceeds it. This includes those subjects, practices and geographies that have been excluded from ‘the human’ as well as aspects of the ordinary, of embodiment and feeling. It may provide a mode of care for cultures and communities. With its epistemological and ontological charge, poetry has been both constitutive of and the limit-point of representation.

This chapter examines the ways in which Judith Wright shaped Australian literary culture, not only through her poetry but also through her work as an editor, anthologist and critic. It contextualises the development of Wright’s poetry in light of her childhood, education and the impact of World War II, arguing that misreadings of her pastoral lyric during Wright’s lifetime failed to appreciate how it undercut settler mythmaking. The chapter discusses Wright’s exploration of a psychic interior during the 1950s and how she became increasingly focused on the settler-colonial mind during the 1960s. It outlines Wright’s engagement with Aboriginal land rights and her leadership in the burgeoning environmental movement. The chapter ascribes much of this change to the influence of Oodgeroo Noonuccal and discusses their poetic correspondence and friendship in the 1970s. The chapter also considers her turn from poetic voice towards practices of observation and listening, arguing that Wright’s attention to ‘the human pattern’ evident in her last volume, Phantom Dwelling, suggests less a silence in her later years than a realignment of her focus and energy.

This chapter considers conceptual books, conceptual writing and concrete poetries, while distinguishing conceptual books and writing from other experimental work. It analyses several examples to demonstrate how their very structure forms a critique of dominant knowledge systems, including structures of settler colonialism and nation. It also considers the relationship between conceptual art and conceptual writing, and the focus on materials, processes and practices surrounding the poem or book’s existence, value and consumption. It discusses the role of visualism in much of conceptual writing. It discusses how conceptual writing has troubled both First World and North-centric mappings and influences, creating parahistoriographies that might be considered parallel to, and separate from, dominant histories.

While pointing to poetry’s diminishing role as a public medium and its increasing absence from major addresses by Australian heads of State, this chapter considers how critical discussions of events that have drawn poetry and the State together often focus on the poet’s politics rather than examining the poetry itself. An example of this is Prime Minister John Howard’s invitation to poet Les Murray to assist in drafting a Preamble to the Australian Constitution. Instead, the chapter focuses on the ideology underpinning the relationship between poetry and the State through three examples from different historical periods. It reads Douglas Stewart’s ‘The Silkworms’ as an allegory for the citizens of a modern, industrialised State in the post-war 1950s. It considers Vicki Viidikas’s ‘Weekend in Bombay’ as engaging with progressive liberalism in the 1980s, and Chloe Wilson‘s ‘Ice’ as articulating the spiritual need and helplessness felt by Australians in light of political and environmental crises and perpetual uncertainty.

This chapter synthesises empirical methodology with detailed contextual analysis to reflect on the ways in which anthologies of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century constructed or de-prioritised national, canonical and generational frames. Noting previous interpretative frameworks such as ‘new lyricism’, this chapter argues that a number of anthologies during this era reflected an ethical turn in Australian poetry and emerged out of or postulated literary communities and networks. The chapter includes an analysis of the two Best Australian anthology series and an analysis of anthologies with canonical impetus. Lastly, it considers the shift in definitional terms from the ‘modern’, ‘new’ or ‘now’ to the ‘contemporary’, as well as forms of discontent with such a term.