How Is The Australian Legend Poem

Firstly, Gilbert creates a critical representation of white Australian’s cynical sense of humour through the perspective of an Indigenous narrator. The repetition of the word “shame” is capitalised and used to highlight and emphasise the white Australians’ iconic, sarcastic humour creating a light and comical tone. Stating that it is a “Shame for talkin’ it up. Shame for the way [Indigenous people] are. Shame cause we ain't got a big flash house.” However, the narrator drops ending consonants sounds in words like “talkin’, ain’t and collectin’” to create an Indigenous voice but more importantly, harsh sounds to express the anger

Our knowledge of the generic conventions used in poetry influences our understanding of the text. “The Firstborn”, a poem by Aboriginal author Jack Davis, enables the reader to determine the poem as a graphic protest about the extinction of and discrimination against the Australian Indigenous people, and the loss of their ethnicity, as their world collides with the Western culture. By focussing on my understanding of both generic conventions and author’s context, I am able to conclude that the poem concerns a tragedy within the Aboriginal community.

Australia is filled with many different aspects in which makes it the country it is today. I believe it is important to study texts that explore aspects of Australia by studying texts such as ‘The Club’, by David Williamson, a play written in 1977 about an Australian football club and movies such as “The Castle”, directed by Rob Stitch in 1997, about the daily life of an Australian family when their happiness is threatened when developers attempt to buy their house to expand the neighboring airport. Both these texts show us what Australian life was like in the past. By us looking at themes such as language, tradition and the mateship shown we are able to explore different aspects of Australia that make it what it is today.

The piece is classified as Aboriginal Australian literature. It was published in the 1960’s. The purpose of the text is to give hope in a new beginning after the events involving the racial tension between the Aboriginals and the white settlers. The poem is directed to the Aboriginal people of Australia who suffered from these events

Through the use of poetic devices, the author has successfully encouraged the audience to explore their thoughts on Australian identity and to reflect on our nation’s history.

Gilbert’s poem portrays many Aboriginals plight’s within Australia and conveys notions of despair, anguish and anger for his fellow Aboriginal comrades. Again, Gilbert uses strong visual imagery in “the anguished death you spread” which helps convey the persona’s feeling of horror and anger at the Europeans. This is further emphasised through the poet’s vehement and repetitive use of second person pronouns in “you” which conveys a sense of blame and accumulates into an accusatory tone and generates a strong sense of detachment between the author and the European settlers. Furthermore enjambment enhances the accusatory tone in “you pollute all the rivers and litter every road” because the lack of punctuation and pauses makes the lines sharp and quick, creating a sense of anger in the author. In addition the author’s use of metaphors in “humanity locked in chains” creates a sense of struggle and inability to escape the oppression the Aboriginals are in, whereby the word “chain” is symbolic for trapped and lack of freedom. Kevin Gilbert’s emotional poem brings light to the pain and suffering Aboriginals are going through, which is a stark contrast to the image of Australia, being a free and accepting

Similarly the idea of Australian life and isolation is depicted in ‘Journey: The North Coast’ where poet is eager to reach home. Perhaps the poet desires to visualise beautiful Australian landscapes as to allow the readers to view the magnificence of flora and fauna in contrast to the man-made destructions. It appears that the poet has been isolated for ‘twelve months’, and Sydney in this case acts as a barrier of poet’s desire towards nature. The title itself symbolises poet’s home and the destination which contradicts to the urban

Wright’s 1945 poem, The Hawthorn Hedge, is a representation of the predatory power of the Australian landscape over those who refuse to unite with it. It details an unspecific persona’s attempts to establish security by planting a hawthorn hedge, separating her from a harsh, imagined landscape. The specificity of “the hawthorn hedge” reveals that this is introduced British species. As the hawthorn hedge is traditionally used as a natural fence, this clarifies that the persona is attempting to block out the landscape around her. Secondly, the fact that the hawthorn hedge is a British species suggests that the persona is also attempting to establish a reminder of her homeland, Britain. A tenet of Wright’s poetry is the strength of the true Australia and the concept of Australia’s break-away from Britain, exemplified in

Australian landscapes have long been used to place fear and anxiety in the Anglo-Australian’s psyche. This anxiety and the requirement for Indigenous peoples to negotiate white ideals is reflected in current Australian literature and cinematic identities. This essay will discuss the critical arguments of what makes the chosen texts Australian literature. This discussion will be restricted to the critiques of the film Lantana directed by Ray Lawrence and the novel Biten’ Back written by Vivienne Cleven. The will firstly look at the use of landscape as a crime scene and how this links to the anxieties caused by the doctrine of terra nullius and the perceived threats from an introduced species. It will then look at the Australian fear of a different ‘other’ followed then by a discussion around masculinity and the need for Indigenous people to negotiate white ideals. The essay will argue that Australian literature and film reflect a nation that still has anxieties about the true sovereignty of the land and assert that Indigenous people have a requirement to fit in with white ideals.

Bruce Dawe, an Australian known poet, born 1930 is still one of the biggest selling and most highly regarded poets of Australia. His ability to write such influential poems has made an impact on a number of people, as each poem can be related to the ordinary living lives of Australians throughout the years. Bruce Dawe's poems are interesting because they comment on the lives of ordinary people. This statement is agreed on. In relation to the statement, three key poems can be linked being Enter Without So Much as Knocking (1959), Homo Suburbiensis (1964) and Drifters (1968).

A little pondering suggests that the poem has a keen focus on the Australian environment. The poet is successful to grab our attention with descriptive explanation in the line in the

Australia’s identity has always been a complicated one. Starting with Aboriginal genocide, 1800’s cowboys and villains, two world wars and a bunch of poems describing them, it makes it difficult to conclude on what being an ‘Aussie’ really is. Thankfully, the two thought-provoking poems Nobody Calls Me a Wog Anymore by Komninos Zervos, and My Country by Dorothea Mackellar both use their discerning selection of themes to reflect modern attitudes in some extent. Along with their themes, Nobody Calls Me a Wog Anymore and My Country both use their story to capture the attributes modern Australians possess to some degree.

In 1876, in his preface to Adam Lindsay Gordon’s Poems, novelist Marcus Clarke coined the phrase ‘Weird Melancholy’ in reference to what he perceived to be the ‘dominant note’ of his country’s landscape and his subject’s verse. In doing so, he distilled the entire mood of Australian Gothic into one eerie essence, an essence present, to varying extents, in all texts of that genre. This can be seen through an examination of two exemplary Australian Gothic texts, each vastly different from the other in form and content, but united by their pervasive aura of Weirdness and Melancholy: Henry Lawson’s 1894 short story ‘The Bush Undertaker’ and Peter

Paterson’s other purpose of this text is to promote nationalism amongst Australian men, persuading them to enlist. He deliberately emphasises on how everyone in Australia is an Australian, through this line ‘English, Scotch, and Irish-bred, They're all Australians now!’ This would make everyone at the time feel obliged to join.

Many of Tim Winton’s fictional texts mirror moments in his own life, and with an understanding of Winton’s personal context, we can begin to discover the importance of these events and an understanding into why many of his text orbit around similar ideas. Through the insight given in his landscape memoirs, Lands Edge and Island Home, a more considered reading of his fictional texts; Breath, A Blow, A Kiss and Sand can be found. Specifically, these texts explore the role that landscape and place have had in shaping his perspectives and distaste of the expectations of Australian males. These texts each explore certain aspects of the expectations that men all over Australia are subjected to that Winton strongly opposes. Winton grew up in the 1960’s middle-class suburb of Karrinyup, WA, his working class Christian family’s beliefs and values, and events in his early life have evolved to form many of his present-day values towards landscape and masculinity.