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Notes
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Dedication: For Sidney Nolan
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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Shade to Camp in : The Land's Meaning : New and Selected Poems
2021
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Randolph Stow : Critical Essays 2021; -
A Western Australian Pastoral of Rust and Dust
2021
single work
criticism
— Appears in: ISLE : Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment , Summer vol. 28 no. 2 2021; (p. 662–685)'Born in 1935 to a family of early and successful Western Australian squattocracy (squatter aristocracy), the celebrated mid-century novelist Randolph Stow’s early life in rural Geraldton exposed him to the political contexts surrounding Australian pastoralism, particularly the dispossession and racist treatment of the Yamatji and Wajarri people of the central Gascoyne region and associated environmental destruction. This article reads two of Stow’s pastoral poems in light of these tensions, following the work of Stow’s Geraldton countryman John Kinsella’s understanding of settler Australian pastoral as inevitably fraught, for instead of a blank arcadia, even in retreat the landscape is always occupied (“Contrary Rhetoric” 136). The most influential voice in contemporary Australia (if not international) criticism of the pastoral, Kinsella argues that environmental violence is inextricable from violence done to the occupants of the land as functions of colonization, and the pastoral as it primarily operates in an Australian context occludes this violence. Kinsella writes that the “hierarchy of land ownership, a concept imported from Europe in particular, has meant that no nostalgia, no return to an Eden, is possible. These Edens are about dispossession and ownership by the few” (“Is There an Australian Pastoral” 348). Yet, is this necessarily other to the pastoral, which traces one of its many origin points to Virgil’s dispossession from his ancestral property at Mantua following the 42BC battle of Phillipi? How might an understanding of the pastoral as social form—complex, communal, and political—better help unpack the work of Stow and others? In this article, I take this question as my central concern, revisiting the poetry of Stow, which has largely rested in a critical lacunae since his death in Harwich, UK, in 2010. I am interested in teasing out how the pastoral is intrinsically linked to citizenship and community, or as William Empson writes, “the problems of one and the many, especially their social aspects” (21). This is the rusted pastoral of the Western Australian Wheatbelt Stow offers us, one that, through the questioning of human communities, is porous, allowing nature, history, and politics to filter through.' (Introduction)
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Aspects of Australian Poetry in 2012
2013
single work
review
— Appears in: Westerly , June vol. 58 no. 1 2013; (p. 68-91)'T he act of reading for appraisal rather than pleasure is a privilege that brings me to a deepened understanding of the contemporary in Australian poetry, the way the past is being framed, its traditions, celebrities and enigmas washed up in new and hybrid appearances or redressed in more conventional, sometimes nimbus forms. Judith Wright wrote that the ‘place to find clues is not in the present, it lies in the past: a shallow past, as all immigrants to Australia know, and all of us are immigrants.’ The discipline of reading to filter such a range of voices underlines my foreignness, making reading akin to translation, whilst reciprocally inviting the reader of this essay to become a foreigner to my assumptions and conclusions.' (Introduction)
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A Poetry Serving Gaia
2006
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Five Bells , Autumn vol. 13 no. 2 2006; (p. 15-23) The author describes seven characteristics of green poetry and discusses the works of several Australian and overseas poets. -
Mal du Pays : Symbolic Geography in the Work of Randolph Stow
1991
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , May vol. 15 no. 1 1991; (p. 3-25)
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A Poetry Serving Gaia
2006
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Five Bells , Autumn vol. 13 no. 2 2006; (p. 15-23) The author describes seven characteristics of green poetry and discusses the works of several Australian and overseas poets. -
Landscape and the Australian Imagination
1986
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Mapped but Not Known : The Australian Landscape of the Imagination : Essays and Poems Presented to Brian Elliott LXXV 11 April 1985 1986; (p. 224-243) -
Mal du Pays : Symbolic Geography in the Work of Randolph Stow
1991
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , May vol. 15 no. 1 1991; (p. 3-25) -
The Price of Silence: Further Thoughts on the Poetry of Randolph Stow
1986
single work
criticism
— Appears in: The Lyre in the Pawnshop : Essays on Literature and Survival 1974-1984 1986; (p. 103-111) -
Aspects of Australian Poetry in 2012
2013
single work
review
— Appears in: Westerly , June vol. 58 no. 1 2013; (p. 68-91)'T he act of reading for appraisal rather than pleasure is a privilege that brings me to a deepened understanding of the contemporary in Australian poetry, the way the past is being framed, its traditions, celebrities and enigmas washed up in new and hybrid appearances or redressed in more conventional, sometimes nimbus forms. Judith Wright wrote that the ‘place to find clues is not in the present, it lies in the past: a shallow past, as all immigrants to Australia know, and all of us are immigrants.’ The discipline of reading to filter such a range of voices underlines my foreignness, making reading akin to translation, whilst reciprocally inviting the reader of this essay to become a foreigner to my assumptions and conclusions.' (Introduction)
- Australian Outback, Central Australia,