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.

England's Helicon, a collection or lyrical and pastoral poems: published in 1600,

Title vignette.

Nicholas Breton, Pastoral poems; George Wither, Selected poetry; William Browne (of Tavistock), Pastoral poetry.

Large paper ed., limited to 250 copies.

Britannia's pastorals.

Errata: p. [12] at beginning.

England's Helicon

Short-title catalogue no. 3191.

Exercises in translation from English poetry into Greek and Latin verse /

Mode of access: Internet.

English poetry,: its principles and progress, with representative masterpieces from 1390 to 1917 and with notes,

Mode of access: Internet.

Early English poetry, ballads, and popular literature of the Middle Ages ;

Mode of access: Internet.

English patriotic poetry,/

Mode of access: Internet.

The treasury of sacred song, selected from the English lyrical poetry of four centuries, with notes, explanatory and biographical.

Mode of access: Internet.

Poetry for schools : designed for reading and recitation : the whole selected from the best poets in the English language /

Publisher's advertisements: [2] p. at beginning of vol.

Studies in poetry. Embracing notices of the lives and writings of the best poets in the English language, a copious selection of elegant extracts, a short analysis of Hebrew poetry, and translations from the sacred poets: designed to illustrate the principles of rhetoric, and teach their application to poetry.

Mode of access: Internet.

Select translations from Old English poetry,

--Index of media.--Index of titles.

Literature and poetry. Studies on the English language; the poetry of the Bible; the Dies iræ; the Stabat Mater; the hymns of St. Bernard; the university, ancient and modern; Dante Alighieri; the Divina commedia,

Includes bibliographies.

Essays on the study of poetry and a guide to English literature /

Mode of access: Internet.