We may love a sunburnt country, but what will we do with someone appointed to write about it?
Stepping in line with many countries in the world, Australia is set to appoint its first Poet Laureate in October, as part of a sweeping and ambitious Australian Government strategy, Revive: A place for every story, a story for every place, in a bid to uplift Australia’s cultural reputation and celebrate and support its creative outputs.
With many different variations of a Poet Laureate around the world, there is plenty of inspiration for Australia to draw upon. But is it what Australia needs? We asked some of UNE’s humanities academics their thoughts.
From the Writing discipline, there’s excitement and support. Dr Lili Pâquet, Senior Lecturer in Writing, says it makes sense to give poetry a platform: “poems are an accessible, memorable and lively way to commemorate national events,” she says.
“And, maybe it will help lift the rhetorical bar in Australia a bit higher; our politicians need all the poetry help they can get! As students of my rhetoric unit know, US President John F. Kennedy had Robert Frost, then Poet Laureate, speak at his inauguration, which positioned Kennedy as a leader who valued the intellectual and artistic culture of his country. Shameless plug: WRIT326/526 is being offered in T2 for anyone interested!”
With many historic poems already firmly fixed in Australia’s consciousness, yes, Dorothea Mackellar’s ‘My Country’, along with Banjo Paterson’s ‘Waltzing Matilda’ and ‘The Man from Snowy River’, for example, Dr Pâquet says Australians should readily accept a Poet Laureate. “And, if there’s any trouble convincing anyone,” she says, “we’re already thirty years behind New Zealand.”
Besides keeping up with the neighbours, could a Poet Laureate also help achieve real change, like transforming Australia’s cultural reputation?
While Dr Pâquet cautions “there’s only so much a poem can do”, she says the value in an Australian Poet Laureate would be the attention it draws to Australian poetry and poets in general, and its ability to reflect Australian culture.
From UNE’s Political and International Studies disciplines, convenor Dr Xiang Gao says poetry can at least “represent Australia’s power and influence internationally,” which, she says, is no small matter.
“Poetry, and other art forms, can demonstrate the state’s ‘soft power’,” she says, “which is the ability to achieve preferred outcomes in international relations through attraction and persuasion.
“Having a Poet Laureate would be an excellent highlight of Australia’s soft power and national characteristics in an international arena.
“Just as Wordsworth captures the beautiful English countryside with a touch of romantic individualism and Whitman embodies the American spirit through the celebration of democracy, nature, and the human body, an Australian national poet could capture the unique connection to the land, the resilience of its peoples, and the blending of cultures in our ‘opal-hearted country’.”
For a real-life example of someone who believed in and lived by the power of the poem, UNE Professor of History David Andrew Roberts says the incoming Poet Laureate need look no further than our own historical example, convict Michael Massey Robinson, a graduate of Oxford and a practising lawyer before his transportation as a criminal to Australia in 1798.
Professor Roberts, an expert on Australian colonial history, says Massey understood the power of poetry, and wielded it for good, evil and mostly for personal gain, becoming unofficially recognised as Australia’s first national poet.
“Massey understood poetry could be socially and politically useful, and dangerous. He was transported as a convict for threatening to publish libellous verse,” Professor Andrews explains.
“In NSW, his odes were clearly tied to his own advancement and financial gain. He was rewarded with, among other things, free cattle. His poems reinforced the governor’s broader vision of the colony: moral reform, civic progress, imperial loyalty, the transformation of convicts into respectable settlers. But tying oneself too closely to a political patron is risky. Massey flourished under NSW Governor Lachlan Macquarie and declined after his departure,” Professor Roberts says.
If there’s a positive lesson from Massey, Professor Roberts says it’s that it is possible for poetry to play a role in shaping Australia’s national identity.
“Massey’s poems articulated a fragile sense of collective identity in early Sydney – he was the first person to really popularise the term ‘Australia’. The Australian identity he captured was about exile, suffering, adversity, perseverance and redemption.
“A modern Laureate would need to know that his/her poetry has a civic role in speaking to a national identity, whatever that is.”
The selection of Australia’s Poet Laureate is being overseen by a new literary funding body, Writing Australia. You can find more about the selection process at Creative Australia.
