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ECHOES IN THE WILDERNESS: WEIRD POETRY IN AusJ'RAL[A BY CHARLES LOVECRAFT

(PART OF A SYMPOSIUM ON WElRD POETRY PUBUSHED IN STUDIES INA USTRALlAN BY BEN

WElRDFICI10N#3, EQUTI.JB~BOOKS,

20,09. QuESTIONS

SZUMSKYJ.)-

1. Australia has a rich history of poetry, from ballads and limericks, to odes and sonnets. How do you account for poetry being so' popular in early Australia and its continual interest with contemporary readers? _ The :first poems written and published in Australia were from England. Poetry was carried here in the minds and luggage of those on board the convict ships that sailed from England. From 1788 until the 1860s, when convicttransportation to Australia ceased, the country was a penal colony. In that time tens of thousands of English, Scottish, Welsh, and Irish people were transported to the Great South Land. Many of them were illiterate and carried only within their memories beautiful sung ballads, odes, songs, and lyrics, even bits of grubby doggerel, whilst the sovereignty, soldiery and free settlers who congregated in the new country brought written culture -:the epic, the sonnet, and all the other forms of formal verse. This was a starting point for Australia's rich history- of poetry. Continuing interest in that form of human expression now is fuelled by the development of Australian verse away from the Gothic and Romantic trappings and traditions of eighteenth-century England, and into its own identity and vitality. It remains a means of experiencing and expressing beauty and the meaning of life down-under, 2. To what degree has European culture and history iilfluenced Australian poetry and who were the poets that established a distinctive Australian voice in this art form? As with most of the other questions here, the focus of my response will mainly be on Australian weird poetry rather than Australian poetry in general. In that context, we may mention the fear of the "ghoulies" that had frightened and terrorized English and European peoples for hundreds of years before and after the First Fleet (1788), and that we absorbed. Inthis multifaceted darksome bundle of arcane legends, weird superstitions, and haunted belief systems, witches, warlocks, banshees, ghosts, ghouls, vampires, undines, etc., ran rampant red revels of seething fright in people's souls, and anything was believed (even in the Bush). These stock frighteners are yet encountered in Australian weird poetic writing today. They can occasionally be found in localsinall-press magazines, written by modem writers yielding to the same impulse

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Henry Lawson (1867-1922) "The Ghost at the ~ond Bridge" Geoffrey Lehmann (1940-) Nero's Poems, "A Voyage of Lions" Norman Lilley (1875-1941) "How Are The Gods To See?" . Jack Lindsay (1900-1990) "Aphrodite," "Venus and Charles II" . Charles Lovecraft (1955-) "At the Door of the Dwarf and Unicorn." "Lady Night" Frederick T. Macarfuey (1887-1980) "Nocturne of the Wet Season" Dorothea Mackellar (1885-1968) "A Happy Ghost," "The Witchmaid" J. S. Manifold (1915-1985) "The Bunyip and the Whistling Kettle" Gilbert Mant (1902-1997) "Lady Jane" C. Allan Marris "Cave" Catherine Martin (1847-1937) "The Curse," "The Lake of the Wailing Child" Grace Ethel Martyr (1888-1934) "The Lantern. Festival" Fumley Maurice (1881-1942) "Hob-Goblin," "The Imp" Hugh McCrae (1876-1958) "The Deathless Gods," "Mandragore" H. C. McKay (1877-1962) "Sorcerer's Love," "The Witch Mistress" Lilla Gormhuille McKay "The Voices" . Patrick Moloney (1843-1904).from Sonnets-s-Ad Jnnuptam "Monaro" "The Dead Folk" _E. J. R. Morgan (1900-?) "Sonnet," "Stars in Hell" Myra Moms (1893-1966) "The Dancing Children" Ernest O'Ferrall (1881-1925) "Gump's Dismal Dog," "A Song Without Sense" Vance Palmer (1885-1959) "The Snake" . Marie E. J. Pitt (1869-1948) "Doherty's Comer" Hal Porter (1911-84) In an Australian Country Graveyard and Other Poems Roderic Quinn (1867-1949) "Soul-Flights," "The Spectral Trees" C. LoS RaDdall "The Vision" Rosa Rawlinson "The Gods of Oblivion" Richard Rowe (1828-1879) "The Angel of Life" "R. F. S;" "While I Lay Deep in Sleep" Helen Simpson (1897-1940) "The Philosopher's Stone Found and Lost" R. A. Simpson (1929-) "The Death of the Devil" Kenneth Slessor (1901-1971) "Pan at Lane Cove," "The Ghosf' Douglas Stewart (1913-1985) "The Bunyip," "Fisher's Ghost" Archibald T. Strong (1876-1930) "Ballade of the Islands of the Blesf' Kath Walker (1920-1993) "The Bunyip" Anne Glenny Wilson (1848-1930) "Fairyland" David McKee Wright (1869-1928) "The Dream Ship," "The Little Gods"

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Futurian Observer