Work by Australian poets : Jo Langdon

Poems included in a constantly expanding archive of contemporary Australian poetry, maintained by Robbie Coburn. Poems by Jo Langdon reproduced here include - Felt, Hauptbahnhof, Zoo, Pevensey Street, and Falling back to sleep.

Poetic boundary conditions : Australian poets in the ivory tower

This article explores the experience of women poets in academe and posits that by institutionalising themselves in universities, women poets gain financial stability by working in the wider field of poetry. However, they also face discrimination and a lack of opportunity in these workplaces. The article uses two case studies of poets Maria Takolander and Jill Jones, who work at Deakin University and the University of Adelaide, Australia, respectively. These case studies show the way in which these poets explore the experience of academe in their poetry.

Australian eco-pastoral poetry

Les Murray and Judith Wright are two Australian poets who are widely read as landscape poets. While this framing offers valuable insights into their work it often fails to bring the importance into a contemporary context or to recognise the long tradition Australia has had with , to use Leo Marx’ term, “the complex pastoral”. As Ruth Blair reminds us in her chapter “Hugging the Shore: The Green Mountains of South-East Queensland” in The Littoral Zone: Australian Contexts and their Writers it is accepted that North America has a tradition of the complex pastoral mode but it should be remembered that Australia also has a long history of this form. Both Judith Wright’s and Les Murray’s poetry encourages active campaigning for the environment .These Australian poets are eco-pastoral poets whose poetry encourages active reading rather than passive reflections. Their poetry speaks to the strong connection between the lived everyday landscape and the imagination of past, present and future. Their work is imbued with a strong sense of ecocritical awareness while at the same time drawing on pastoral conventions. These two Australian poets do not offer idealistic pastoral notions but rather reveal the complexities of lived human/nonhuman relationships. This paper will discuss these complexities and how poetry can be experienced as literature in action—ways for readers to connect with and negotiate with the land they inhabit. The research for this paper was, in part, drawn from the responses that local community library groups offered after reading the works of these poets. What became evident from this research was the way the poetry made the readers think not only of landscape as a place of refuge from the urban technological world but also as a contemporary place with connection to agency that motivates readers into active change.

Born of fire, possessed by darkness : mysticism and Australian poetry

This dissertation is structured around five Australian mystical poets: Ada Cambridge, John Shaw Neilson, Francis Webb, Judith Wright and Kevin Hart. It examines the varieties of Western Christian mysticism upon which these poets draw, or with which they exhibit affinities. A short prelude section to each chapter considers the thematic parallels of their contemporaries, while the final chapter critically investigates constructions of Indigeneity in Australian mystical poetry and the renegotiated mystical poetics of Indigenous poets and theologians. The central argument of this dissertation is that an understanding of Western Christian mysticism is essential to the study of Australian poetry. There are three sub-arguments: firstly, that Australian literary criticism regarding the mystical largely avoids the concept of mysticism as a shifting notion both historically and in the present; secondly, that what passes for mysticism is recurringly subject to poorly defined constructions of mysticism as well as individual poets’ use of the mystical for personal, creative or ideological purposes; thirdly, that in avoiding the concept of a shifting notion critics have ignored the increasing contribution of Australian poets to national and international discourses of mysticism.

The Orchid House

Poem

Night Sonnet

Poem

The sewing room

Poem

'Untranscended / life itself': the poetry of Pam Brown

Pam Brown's cynicism, satire, attractions and repulsions seem built around an absent centre, something always already in the poetry lost in the tedious non-occurrences of contemporary Australian life. Brown has typically published in a scattered, small-press way and while this small-press, small-readership approach is something most Australian poets know intimately, Brown has made it into an art form, and one which seems in keeping with her own ironic and at times cynical approach to the world of appearance, celebrity and media hype.

How do detectives make love? : themes of the survival of the child: corruption in relation to innocence

The major component of the thesis is a manuscript of poetry titled How do detectives make love? which includes forty poems written over a period of two years. Many of these; poems have been published in literary journals and magazines both in Australia and internationally as well as being performed at various performance poetry venues. How do detectives make love? was accepted for publication by Penguin Books, Australia in 1994. Also included is a 12,000 word exegesis in support of the manuscript titled How do detectives make love? Themes of the survival of the child: corruption in relation to innocence. The exegesis explores various themes and motifs occurring throughout the work, including the motif of birds and dogs, and the themes of love and the police, guns and weaponry, the outback and parklands, the parents, the change from childhood to adolescence and adolescence to adulthood, and the survival of the child. The current vital social relevance of these themes and motifs is explored in the poems. The literary use of the themes is explored comparatively with the work of other Australian poets including Gig Ryan, Kenneth Slessor and Les Murray. The purpose of the exegesis is to give the reader insights into the poet's intellectual processes and literary concerns throughout the work itself.

Poetry, politics and place : black and white perceptions of landscape in modern Australian poetry 1965-1990

Argues that the most influential landscape poetry deals with landscape as an aesthetic concept, and also with the politics of land ownership. Several "landscape poets". Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, have given voice to some of the most compelling social currents in society, and their work has an important place in contemporary political debate.

Spirit-music unbound: Romanticism and print politics in Australian women's poetry 1830-1905

This thesis presents a re-mapping of Australian poetic tradition to reflect the presence of colonial women poets. The research recovers a wide range of neglected poetry, offering a new way of reading these important poets as politic and transnational, particularly through the significance of newspaper authorship and international women’s poetry.