AustLit

'Poetry in themes - Pioneering - Convicts and bushrangers - Birds and animals - Towns and people - War - Youth - Time and eternity - Thought and personality.' (Source: WorldCat website)

'Sense, Shape, Symbol is an investigation of Australian poetry. It explores the ways in which poets succeed, or fail, in their attempts to bring their experience to life.

Their primary raw materials are the five senses - sight, sound, smell, taste and touch - the means by which we all experience our world.

Poets also like to experiment with the shape of their writing, starting with the qualities of vowels and consonants, of syllables, and of rhyme, metre and rhythm.

Working poets make particular use of the metaphor, of the connections that they suggest between normally unlike things, to express their response to their subject.

The collection explores the work of five poets who have played an important, influential part in the development of Australian poetry: Judith Wright, Oodgeroo Noonuccal, David Malouf, Les Murray and Mark O’Connor.

The final chapter looks at some of the common concerns that can create conflict in our lives, such as gender, race, age, and socio-economic status, and other issues that create fear and that encourage hope.

The collection is intended to allow readers to become familiar with the techniques that poets use, and to develop their own poetic writing in an informed way.' (Publisher's blurb)

'Poems, stories, letters and extracts from novels, plays and journals present a great variety of responses to Australia and to the art of writing. Items have been arranged into 12 groupings that reflect different ways of seeing the material of Australian writing. Each section has its own introduction. Problems are explained, theories and contexts for a wider understanding are offered. The book includes biographical guides to all authors and a full chronological table of events in the literary history of Australia.'   (Publication summary)

'This is a comprehensive survey of Australian poetic achievement, ranging from early colonial and indigenous verse to contemporary work, from the major poets to those who deserve to be better recognised.' (Provided by the publisher).

'Some of the best, most significant writing produced in Australia over more than two centuries is gathered in this landmark anthology. Covering all genres - from fiction, poetry and drama to diaries, letters, essays and speeches - the anthology maps the development of one of the great literatures in English in all its energy and variety.

'The writing reflects the diverse experiences of Australians in their encounter with their extraordinary environment and with themselves. This is literature of struggle, conflict and creative survival. It is literature of lives lived at the extremes, of frontiers between cultures, of new dimensions of experience, where imagination expands.

'This rich, informative and entertaining collection charts the formation of an Australian voice that draws inventively on Indigenous words, migrant speech and slang, with a cheeky, subversive humour always to the fore. For the first time, Aboriginal writings are interleaved with other English-language writings throughout - from Bennelong's 1796 letter to the contemporary flowering of Indigenous fiction and poetry - setting up an exchange that reveals Australian history in stark new ways.

'From vivid settler accounts to haunting gothic tales, from raw protest to feisty urban satire and playful literary experiment, from passionate love poetry to moving memoir, the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature reflects the creative eloquence of a society.

'Chosen by a team of expert editors, who have provided illuminating essays about their selections, and with more than 500 works from over 300 authors, it is an authoritative survey and a rich world of reading to be enjoyed.' (Publisher's blurb)

Allen and Unwin have a YouTube channel with a number of useful videos on the Anthology.