AustLit logo
Issue Details: First known date: 2017... 2017 Unruly Energies : Two Surveys of Australian Poetry
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

AbstractHistoryArchive Description

‘According to The Magic Pudding, Bunyip Bluegum’s erudition is established through his ability to ‘converse on a great variety of subjects, having read all the best Australian poets’, a questionable achievement in Norman Lindsay’s day. A glance through the Annals of Australian Literature reveals the paucity of quality Australian poetry volumes published through most of the twentieth century, with selection shaped by the tastes of powerfully controlling editors, especially Douglas Stewart. Even in 1966, Max Harris’s survey essay on ‘Conflicts in Australian Intellectual Life’ – in which he inveighs against the academic gatekeeping of critics such as A.D.  Hope, James McAuley, and Vincent Buckley in the post-‘Ern Malley’ era – notes the limited opportunities for publication by emerging ‘younger non-intellectual’ poets. This situation changed dramatically for the generation of poets who appeared in the 1970s, with generous subsidies and the emergence of a range of independent and commercial publishing opportunities for poetry volumes: poets of this generation – whilst splitting the spoils along the lines of painstakingly demarcated coteries – responded to this opportunity by producing oeuvres often staggeringly more voluminous than those of the poets who preceded them (Kenneth Slessor’s 100 Poems would these days barely constitute a single publication).’ (Introduction)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Australian Book Review ABR no. 389 March 2017 10824710 2017 periodical issue

    'Welcome to the March issue! Highlights include:

    • Ross McKibbin on the Chilcot Report into the Iraq debacle
    • Margaret Harris on an ‘enthralling’ study of Queen Victoria
    • Morag Fraser on Mark Colvin’s dual memoir
    • Beejay Silcox on George Saunders’s début novel
    • The 2017 Peter Porter Poetry Prize shortlist

    (From ABR website)

    2017
    pg. 43-45
Last amended 10 Mar 2017 13:37:28
43-45 Unruly Energies : Two Surveys of Australian Poetrysmall AustLit logo Australian Book Review
Newspapers:
    Powered by Trove
    X