AustLit logo
Rex Ingamells Rex Ingamells i(A14463 works by) (a.k.a. Reginald Charles Ingamells; Reg Ingamells)
Born: Established: 19 Jan 1913 Orroroo, Hallett - Jamestown - Peterborough - Orroroo area, Mid North South Australia, South Australia, ; Died: Ceased: 30 Dec 1955 Dimboola, Nhill - Dimboola - Albacutya area, North West Victoria, Victoria,
Gender: Male
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.

BiographyHistory

After completing a BA in history at the University of Adelaide, Rex Ingamells worked as a teacher, freelance journalist and publisher's representative. Ingamells began writing short stories and poems in 1930, and by 1936 he was seriously exploring the ideas that would establish the Jindyworobak Movement. Ingamells' idea of poetry was influenced by P. R. Stephensen's The Foundations of Culture in Australia (1936), D. H. Lawrence's Kangaroo (1923) and his reading on Aboriginal culture. Ingamells took the word 'Jindy-worabak' from James Devaney's The Vanished Tribes (1929), attracted by Devaney's definition 'to annex, to join'. Ingamells encouraged poetry that avoided European traditions and more closely signified the Australian environment to produce an authentic expression of Australian culture.

While not widely admired for his poetry today, Ingamells attracted some attention in the 1940s, winning the Grace Leven Prize for The Great South Land (1945). The Jindyworobak philosophy attracted a variety of writers, including Flexmore Hudson, Max Harris, Colin Thiele, Judith Wright, Gwen Harwood and Geoffrey Dutton. Between 1938 and 1953 Ingamells produced annual Jindyworobak anthologies and he wrote a history of the movement in 1948. But the movement was sometimes bitterly attacked by mainstream critics and ceased to exist by the end of the 1950s. Nevertheless, critics have detected elements of Jindyworobakism in the works of Xavier Herbert, Patrick White, Peter Porter and Les Murray. In 1951 Ingamells was appointed a judge of the Commonwealth Jubilee Literary Competiton.

Rex Ingamells was killed in a car accident in 1955.

Most Referenced Works

Notes

  • Also published: Australian Aboriginal words : Aboriginal-English, English-Aboriginal, Melbourne : Hallcraft, 1955;edited Spoils of Time : Some Poems of the English-speaking Peoples, Melbourne : Georgian House, 1948.

Awards for Works

y separately published work icon The Great South Land : An Epic Poem Melbourne : Georgian House , 1951 Z131301 1951 sequence poetry
1951 winner ASAL Awards ALS Gold Medal
1951 winner Grace Leven Poetry Prize
Forgotten People i "As the sun leaps up behind the range and throws", 1936 single work poetry
— Appears in: The Bulletin , 22 January vol. 57 no. 2919 1936; (p. 19) Forgotten People 1936; (p. 9-12) Selected Poems 1944; (p. 48-51) An Anthology of Australian Verse 1952; (p. 163-164) The Jindyworobaks 1979; (p. 11-14)
1936 winner University of Adelaide Bundey Prize for English Verse

Known archival holdings

Papers of Brian R. Elliott Adelaide University Barr Smith Library (SA)
Correspondence 1933-1952 State Library of Victoria (VIC)
Last amended 18 Jun 2012 16:32:20
Other mentions of "" in AustLit:
    X