Published in the poetry collection The Gateway, 1953
As we prepare the bunting for the Module C farewell parade, it has been interesting to see how far some students will wander to find an interesting related text, which is to say, some barely manage to cross the street.
Some schools give lists, some teachers refrain from doing so. Approaching the time when the Trial Exams loom on the horizon, I was very open to giving some suggestions and steering students in the direction of some great films and poetry about the significance of place (for the 'people and landscape' elective.)
Students perhaps have not embraced the freedom and risk which the quest for related texts was intended to encourage. Preferring to rely on a perceived 'sure thing', many students are grabbing the first thing they find from a hasty online search, rather than connecting personally with an original choice.
Today's journey led me back to the poet, Judith Wright. It is tempting to continually explain her attainment of the title of eminent poet - yes she was Australia, yes she was a woman - but one look at her vibrant, powerful poems which fortunately found publication in the late 1940s onward reveal a talent that influenced Australia's modernist voice.
Her ionic poems are about the intensity of personal revelation. How a woman relates to the presence of her unborn child, how a woman can rouse and balance the passion within to articulate feelings of desire, power and artistry. In virtually ever line she wrote, there is a complexity of wonder and ideas achieved through the simplest of images - colour, strength and earth. Perhaps mistaken for a nature poet, Judith Wright was a poet of human nature, foremost.
Added to this, her poetry is very accessible to all high school students.
Here is the poem Eroded Hills, which presents a strong image of place. Also, it represents the ambiguous yet intense connection between an observer and their landscape.
Eroded Hills
by Judith Wright, 1953
These hills my father's father stripped,
and beggars to the winter wind
they crouch like shoulders naked and whipped -
humble, abandoned, out of mind.
Of their scant creeks I drank once
and ate sour cherries from old trees
found in their gullies fruiting by chance.
Neither fruit nor water gave my mind ease.
I dream of hills bandaged by snow,
their eyelids clenched to keep out fear.
when the last leaf and bird go
let me thoughts stand like trees here.
As we prepare the bunting for the Module C farewell parade, it has been interesting to see how far some students will wander to find an interesting related text, which is to say, some barely manage to cross the street.
Some schools give lists, some teachers refrain from doing so. Approaching the time when the Trial Exams loom on the horizon, I was very open to giving some suggestions and steering students in the direction of some great films and poetry about the significance of place (for the 'people and landscape' elective.)
Students perhaps have not embraced the freedom and risk which the quest for related texts was intended to encourage. Preferring to rely on a perceived 'sure thing', many students are grabbing the first thing they find from a hasty online search, rather than connecting personally with an original choice.
Today's journey led me back to the poet, Judith Wright. It is tempting to continually explain her attainment of the title of eminent poet - yes she was Australia, yes she was a woman - but one look at her vibrant, powerful poems which fortunately found publication in the late 1940s onward reveal a talent that influenced Australia's modernist voice.
Her ionic poems are about the intensity of personal revelation. How a woman relates to the presence of her unborn child, how a woman can rouse and balance the passion within to articulate feelings of desire, power and artistry. In virtually ever line she wrote, there is a complexity of wonder and ideas achieved through the simplest of images - colour, strength and earth. Perhaps mistaken for a nature poet, Judith Wright was a poet of human nature, foremost.
Added to this, her poetry is very accessible to all high school students.
Here is the poem Eroded Hills, which presents a strong image of place. Also, it represents the ambiguous yet intense connection between an observer and their landscape.
Eroded Hills
by Judith Wright, 1953
These hills my father's father stripped,
and beggars to the winter wind
they crouch like shoulders naked and whipped -
humble, abandoned, out of mind.
Of their scant creeks I drank once
and ate sour cherries from old trees
found in their gullies fruiting by chance.
Neither fruit nor water gave my mind ease.
I dream of hills bandaged by snow,
their eyelids clenched to keep out fear.
when the last leaf and bird go
let me thoughts stand like trees here.
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