AustLit

'When I edited a special Queensland issue of Poetry Australia in the mid-1960's (April 1965) the activity of poetry seemed narrow but had produced some notable names. Judith Wright, John Blight and David Rowbotham were pillars of what we felt was the house of poetry, a house that had been enthusiastically constructed during World War Two from an impassioned sense of regional affirmation and the confidence to seek a language to express that affirmation; the short, eloquent lyric seemed the 'natural' mode. It was only the recent arrival of Bruce naive that showed how closely the regional voice was based on regional dialect as well, regional humour and the sense of being alive and committed to a particular time. The 1960's had also produced what seemed a sudden new wave of poets. David Malouf, Judith Green (Rodriguez) and Rodney Hall, together with Donald Maynard in Four Poets (Cheshire, 1963) formed a Brisbane group that was to have wide ramifications. It is significant that even by 1965 only one Rodney Hall—was still living in Queensland. He has since moved south. ' (Introduction)