Great Australian Poetry
Given that you’re reading this in 2025 (or later, I always appreciate someone who checks out my back catalogue of musings), the chances are pretty high you don’t think of poetry very often. When you do think of poetry, I’d hazard a guess it’s probably going to be Robert Frost or Edgar Allan Poe that comes to mind. Maybe T.S. Elliott or Emily Dickinson.
None of those poets are Australian. But, despite not being as widely known about - even here - Australia has had many great poets. Poetry has had a not insignificant part to play in our cultural landscape over the years.
Australia is a comparatively young nation compared to many others, but we are no less storied for it. We have a rich cultural heritage borne from a variety of different places - indigenous Australians, the settlers from the UK, immigrants who have moved here from all over the world for a number of reasons and those of us who have grown up here surrounded by the legacy of all of the above.
This means that our art - poetry included - draws on all of these sources. Even the few universal themes - life and death, love, identity, nature - can be explored through a multitude of different lenses, all developed through interacting with all these different backgrounds. Australia has long been a cultural melting pot and reading our poetry can help bridge the gap between different ideas through discussing shared human experiences and enlightening us about those things that we don’t have in common.
Recommendations
Now that I’ve given that lengthy preamble, here are a handful of Aussie poetry books I recommend for people looking to dip their toes into this side of our cultural landscape. It is by no means comprehensive, but it isn’t meant to be. This is just a starting point.
Collected Poems - Frederic Manning
Manning wrote about a lot of things, but is most famous for his work relating to his experiences with World War I. This particular book is a collection of Manning;s work from his first three books of poetry.
I didn’t actually discover Manning through this book or any of the books it takes from. I was first introduced to him by his poem Grotesque, which was featured in The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry (the only Australian entry in the book). It paints a grim picture of war and notes the irony of feeling patriotic towards a nation that views you as a sacrifice.
My personal favourite of Manning’s poems though is Kore, a poem personifying a calm, but mournful death.
Verse for the Nullarbor - Compiled by Jill Campbell, Illustrated by Henry Giblin
While I think this book was put together with younger readers in mind, its contents range from the childish and absurd to the thought-provoking and heartwrenching - so there’s plenty in here that will resonate with older readers too. A range of poets are featured, but some definitely more than others.
As the title of the collection suggests, the poems within largely discuss the isolation of the outback and the Nullarbor Plain. However, many other concepts are explored such as various other aspects of Australian culture and history, conflict between people and groups and the passage of time. Here are some of my favourites from the collection:
The Kalgoorlie Flying Doctor (D’Arcy McNamara), which discusses the essentialness of the Flying Doctor service in the vast, empty expanse of the outback and why we should endeavour to keep it going.
Reflections in the Rain (Peter Hogg), which is a somewhat humorous look at the harsh and unpredictable nature of weather in the outback and also captures a sense of isolation and distance.
Old Men and Time (Peter Hogg), in which Hogg reflects on the nature of nostalgia and how people - especially the elderly - tend to look back at times gone by with rose-tinted glasses. I particularly like how it manages to be blunt about this without being derisive. It instead feels sympathetic, noting that when old people look at the past with this bias, they don’t really miss times that were objectively harder for a lot of people. Rather, they miss being young themselves and how they felt during that time.
War (Mary Ann Hector), a reflection on the pointless brutality of racial violence and our history of discrimination and prejudice. This one is sadly as relevant today as ever, not just to our colonial history and not just to Australia.
Why (Mary Ann Hector), a short and vivid look into the mind of an abandoned infant as it slowly dies of starvation. It is an unflinching and agonising look at the child’s suffering and confusion as it cannot understand its circumstances. Evidently, Mary Ann Hector has a penchant for violently tugging on heartstrings.
Sometimes Gladness - Bruce Dawe
I’ve talked about Bruce Dawe before in a previous article, so his name might sound familiar to you. Then again, out of all the Australian poets, he is arguably the one you are most likely to have heard of before anyway. He is one of our most famed and influential poets.
Dawe often wrote about (or from the perspective of) ordinary Australian life and culture, focusing his poetry on mundane places, people or objects. However, he also frequently explored themes of disenfranchisement and otherness, often using those mundane things as a lens to do so. His poetry paints a very earnest look at Australian culture, highlighting the good and bad in equal measure and feeling all the more genuine for it. As a collection of the majority of his work, Sometimes Gladness is an excellent showcase of this.
Enter Without So Much as Knocking, my favourite poem (not just of Dawe’s, but in general) is featured in the collection. I’ve written about that in more detail here. I’d also particularly recommend Burial Ceremony, which discusses how brave people die to preserve the freedoms and petty, menial concerns of those who would never do the same for them. Life-cycle is also an excellent piece. In it, using the idea of being born into supporting a specific AFL team as a metaphor, Dawe showcases the nature of tribalism and how it is generationally ingrained in us.
Conclusion
Australia has a deep and storied culture of incredible art, of which poetry is very much a part. There have been many incredibly gifted, innovative and creative poets through the years that deserve all of the spotlight they have received and then some - and I’m not just talking about the handful of poets featured in this article either. Through our poetry, you see a fascinating picture painted of our history and our culture and the ways it has evolved over time and continues to do so - in part due to the artists who are inspired by it. Our poetry can be inspiring, cathartic and educational all in equal measure.
Thanks to the internet, it has never been easier to find poetry to take a look at. So I’d recommend searching around to find not just the works I’ve listed here, but other more contemporary additions to the poetry landscape as well.
If you’re interested in my own additions to that landscape, you can find them here. Poetry continues to be one of the things that draws a surprisingly large percentage of you to this site, so I will endeavour to continue producing more of it in the hopes that I can appeal to you in the same way that the poets I talked about in this article appeal to me. Maybe one day I’ll even put out a collection of my own.
As for my other work, please take a look at my short stories as well or consider supporting me through subscribing to my Premium service or visiting my store.
