Dear Editor
My name is John Foulcher, renowned Australian poet. I have recently been surfing the World Wide Web and by accident I come up with your site, “Online Anthology of Australian Poets”. The subject matter of poetry attracted me to wonder around your website.
I believe my poetry should be included in your collection for I have lived and breathed Australian culture for just over 50 years now, I have recorded my way of life in my poems, and in particular I have a specific poem to refer to you, that is of my own and two others (also of my own work) that I think are you should seriously consider having in your collection.
The first poem I think you should consider in adding to your list of poems is “For the Fire”, this poem was
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There is alliteration in the stanzas of 3 and 6 “blade beak” and claws clutching”. This poem also has a rhythm to it; the stanzas are not constructed in that unbalanced way in which it’s hard to keep flowing feel to the literature.
The second poem is “Bradman’s last Innings”; it is a little momentum to the great Sir Donald Bradman and his effect on Australian life. It is about how Bradman was more than just a cricket great, but also a light in people’s lives, that relieved the pain of war and anguish. He symbolised the gentleman in us all, the fair player, and the great Australian icon.
The structure is simple, 4 sets of three lined stanzas. The introduction sums up the feeling of what many felt when he was bowled out first ball, “bowled out for a duck, you could have asked for better”, alliteration is also used in this literature eg “war, women waiting”. I’ve used descriptive words to paint pictures in the head to create a mental image of what I saw that day eg “clear white flannels sharp against the green turf”. The whole poem has that flowing feel to it also just like the first poem mentioned.
The third poem is “martin and the hand grenade”, it recounts an event when a little boy brought an unarmed grenade to school to show to his equals, and the effect of the grenade on the minds of the infants. The subject matter of war straight away creates the mood to the poem, the descriptive words such as firing, bleak, power, hurls and so on, play an important part
This enhances the mood of courage and fearlessness of the players and of anticipation in light of the upcoming polo match. Members of both polo teams show fortitude and resilience through their willingness to continue playing after having had pain bestowed upon them and witnessing the atrocities of the polo match. By fighting through adversities and sacrificing themselves for the betterment of their teammates, the players display the values of Australian identity. Paterson used a variety of language features, including metaphor and personification, to enhance the mood of the poem. For example, the metaphor ‘They were demons, were the members of the Geebung Polo Club’ enhances the mood of bravado leading up to the polo match. Paterson’s use of personification in the line, ‘Now my readers can imagine how the contest ebbed and flowed’ not only heightens the mood of excitement, but also engages the
Over all, the poem helps imagine a possible student siting in a desk, reading a poem, and pulling his/ her hair out. Also the poem’s sound seems to be rushed. Together with the tone, it makes the poem sound like an angry student speaking very fast as to why he/she hates poetry. The rhythm seems to be regular. It shows to have a regular beat of unstress and distress. Each line follows a beat, but the lines don’t rhyme. The poem seems to show a few figures of speech. “Has difficulty retaining such things as addition and subtraction facts, or multiplication tables” meaning has a hard time understanding the poem more than math (Collins). “May recognize a word one day and not the next” means the reader would have a hard time remembering the overall meaning od a poem and its means (Collins). Also it would mean that the reader was very annoyed that he/she forgot everything about the
The poems “The Charge of the Light Brigade” and “Dulce ET Decorum EST” are war poems. They reflect on two different but equally harrowing events, however the poets portray these events using their own style and the and result is two entirely different views of war.
As the producer of ‘ABC’s First Tuesday Book Club’, I feel compelled to inform you that recent episodes have been substandard in quality and irrelevant for today’s contemporary audience. The best suggestion is for an entire episode devoted to the poetry of Gwen Harwood, a widely celebrated Australia poet. Her poetry presents unique ideas about the beauty of music, the growth from childhood to adulthood and the recollection of memories and experiences. The nature of her poetry is both intense and brilliant, qualities which effortlessly justify the enduring value of her work to still hold great value in today’s society.
The themes of the two poems are portrayed in very distinctive ways. ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ explains in a majestic approach, that fighting in war is something every soldier should honour. The poem is
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.
In addition to this, the poem uses auditory imagery to shatter the dream-like atmosphere that has been created surrounding the suburb, with the “howl of the twin-cam war party” and the “techno pulse” destroying the tranquillity, and emanating the “invasion” of Australia by the Europeans over 200 years ago. This further works to evoke feelings of empathy from the reader by allowing them to observe “eye for an eye” philosophy, present throughout the poem, in phrases such as “areas we treat with the same contempt laid upon us”. These ideologies are present throughout Samuel Wagan Watson’s body of work, with many poems throughout the anthology displaying similar attitudes towards the colonisation of Australia, and the degradation of the spirituality of the land that followed.
The poem is formed of eight stanzas, each one is six lines long except for the fifth stanza which is an octet. The stanzas are formed of sets of three rhyming couplets in the
Addressed directly to Sir Donald - in the use of the second person singular - Foulcher's poem is unique in combining at once a tribute and a lament. He is not bent on diminishing the generations' celebration of Bradman's greatness, but his honesty is such that he must set that achievement in the larger context of his interpretation of the human condition - of fate.
The poems “Martin and the Hand Grenade “is based on a personal experience that Foulcher had had while teaching at a boys school in one of his history lessons. This poem portrays the idea that adults and children have a
On screen there is an example of this device in The Apology Day Breakfast. This device runs on a thought from one line to another without punctuation, this causes breaks of rhythm and effects the rate of reading. The effect of using this device is the creation of a sense of disconnect, as a constant theme running throughout both poems. Similarly, both poems have no consistent rhyming scheme and lack basic punctuation. The decision of both poets to employ an unstructured approach in terms of form and punctuation creates discomfort within the reader and challenges them to makes sense of what has been written. The use of primary sources as annotations in Heart’s Core Lament brings further depth and provides the reader an opportunity to consider the implications of white colonisation on Australia’s indigenous people.
Throughout the poem the tone and harmony is showing many different moods including shyness, anger and calmness. An example of shyness is at the start of the poem “softy, silently it swishes”, an example of anger is in the middle of the poem “it thumps, it sprays it rips at shores, its ozone spray”, and finally at the end of the poem calmness is shown, “it spends its strength, it sings, it sighs. The wave recedes”. One aspect of the poem I find intriguing is the alliteration and personification. For example, “it sighs, it sings, it seeks”.
When you hear the words Australian identity, what images instantly pop up in your head? Is it the diversity, the landscape, the mate-ship, the beaches or perhaps it’s the stereotypical aussis’? Personally, I believe the Australian identity is what each individual interprets and envisions Australia to be. The Australian identity is really what you love about Australia! One way we can express ourselves and the love we have for our country, is of course by, you guessed it, poetry! Poetry is not just any literature, in fact, poetry is a whole other world, a world that connects people in whole new level. Poetry’s art, it’s passion, it’s power. Australian poetry seeks to tell stories and truths, marked with diversity, emotion, and interest in landscape, with the effect of visual power. These elements that make up such patriotic poems can be seen through the dichotomy of the two poems, “Australia” by A.D Hope and “My Country” by Dorthea Mackellar.
In today’s modern view, poetry has become more than just paragraphs that rhyme at the end of each sentence. If the reader has an open mind and the ability to read in between the lines, they discover more than they have bargained for. Some poems might have stories of suffering or abuse, while others contain happy times and great joy. Regardless of what the poems contains, all poems display an expression. That very moment when the writer begins his mental journey with that pen and paper is where all feelings are let out. As poetry is continues to be written, the reader begins to see patterns within each poem. On the other hand, poems have nothing at all in common with one another. A good example of this is in two poems by a famous writer by
In the essay I am going to compare and contrast the way in which different attitudes to war are presented in the poems ‘Dulce et Decorum est’. And ‘Vitai Lampada’. Both poem are a bout war but they are wrote in completely different ways.