I only just realised why this poem is humorous as well as mystical, beautiful and serious. If you are a 'wright' - shipwright, playwright, wheelwright - you are a maker of something, a manufacturer. Judith Wright plays on this concept of being a maker when she muses on the work she does as a poet. Her poem The Maker is from one of her earlier collections.
This is an elegant, strongly-crafted poem that presents solid images of nature and the elements. Wright shows how in her role as poet she has internalised the process of flux ('all things that change and pass') and uses a metaphor of fertility and growth to reflect her imaginative process ('in my soil take root').
Wright here articulates the emotional purpose of poetry or any writing, to recreate her own and others' emotions. When she writes 'I from my own heart make', there is a strong sense of the poet's insistence that she feels obligated and determined to show how emotions like love or fear are a real as the trees and fruit with which she began the poem.
Some reasons this poem reminds me of themes in my passion project are because I want to write powerfully about the healing effects of nature. I wish to show that my main character changes his mind about something he previously looked down upon, like gardening and farming. The main character is a young man who has left the busy coastal city of Venice behind, and misses the bustle and excitement of this global trading port. While he feels he has been rejected from the city and made to do work which is beneath him, I want to show how eventually his mind and emotions are changed towards working with the earth.
I also need to accept that my main character will never love nature and gardening the same way that the poet Judith Wright does, but I do want to portray how over time, this character will be more accepting of his new life and will actually start to take pride in the things he learns both about himself and about growing edible plants. He will regain his former confident attitude but only after going through some dramatic changes due to the cultural and geographical shifts he has had to make.
Published in the poetry collection Woman to Man, 1949.
The Maker
by Judith Wright
I hold the crimson fruit
and plumage of the palm;
flame-tree, that scarlet spirit,
in my soil takes root.
My days burn with the sun,
my nights with moon and star,
since into myself I took
all living things that are.
All things that glow and move,
all things that change and pass,
I gather their delight
as in a burning-glass;
all things I focus in
the crystal of my sense.
I give them breath and life
and set them free in the dance.
I am a tranquil lake
to mirror the joy and pain;
and all their pain and joy
I from my own heart make,
since love, who cancels fear
with his fixed will,
burned my vision clear
and bid my sense be still.
This is an elegant, strongly-crafted poem that presents solid images of nature and the elements. Wright shows how in her role as poet she has internalised the process of flux ('all things that change and pass') and uses a metaphor of fertility and growth to reflect her imaginative process ('in my soil take root').
Wright here articulates the emotional purpose of poetry or any writing, to recreate her own and others' emotions. When she writes 'I from my own heart make', there is a strong sense of the poet's insistence that she feels obligated and determined to show how emotions like love or fear are a real as the trees and fruit with which she began the poem.
Some reasons this poem reminds me of themes in my passion project are because I want to write powerfully about the healing effects of nature. I wish to show that my main character changes his mind about something he previously looked down upon, like gardening and farming. The main character is a young man who has left the busy coastal city of Venice behind, and misses the bustle and excitement of this global trading port. While he feels he has been rejected from the city and made to do work which is beneath him, I want to show how eventually his mind and emotions are changed towards working with the earth.
I also need to accept that my main character will never love nature and gardening the same way that the poet Judith Wright does, but I do want to portray how over time, this character will be more accepting of his new life and will actually start to take pride in the things he learns both about himself and about growing edible plants. He will regain his former confident attitude but only after going through some dramatic changes due to the cultural and geographical shifts he has had to make.
Published in the poetry collection Woman to Man, 1949.
The Maker
by Judith Wright
I hold the crimson fruit
and plumage of the palm;
flame-tree, that scarlet spirit,
in my soil takes root.
My days burn with the sun,
my nights with moon and star,
since into myself I took
all living things that are.
All things that glow and move,
all things that change and pass,
I gather their delight
as in a burning-glass;
all things I focus in
the crystal of my sense.
I give them breath and life
and set them free in the dance.
I am a tranquil lake
to mirror the joy and pain;
and all their pain and joy
I from my own heart make,
since love, who cancels fear
with his fixed will,
burned my vision clear
and bid my sense be still.
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