Can bush poetry survive?

[Neville Briggs]

The muse is there, whispering in your ear " Pick up the pen, Irene "

[Irene]

Oh, I want to Neville - just nothing is coming at the moment!!! It must be summer - dry and thirsty times!!

Catchya
IRene

[Stephen Whiteside]

One of the problems with attempting to draw a line in the sand like this is that you then have to decide where to put the line. It raises interesting questions, both temporally and geographically.

Geography first.

Take a poem like Lawson's 'Faces in the Street'. This is set in the city of Sydney, as I recall. Would this poem therefore fail Valerie's criteria for inclusion as 'bush verse'? I don't know. Just a question. How about 'The Captain of the Push', also by Lawson?

I can see problems with Paterson, too. 'The Man from Ironbark' is set in a country town. Can a town be regarded as the bush, or not? Is it a question of population? Or does it come down to distance from the nearest capital centre, or regional centre? Is Ballarat still the bush? What about Geelong or Wollongong? How about Bairnsdale? Again, just questions.

Even 'Clancy of the Overflow' could be problematic. Although Clancy is in the bush (or at least he used to be - nobody knows were he is now!), the narrator is in the city. So it could be argued that the poem is actually set in the city, and does not therefore qualify as 'bush verse'. The only part of the poem that relates to the bush is in the mind of the city-bound narrator. IS THIS GOOD ENOUGH?

Dennis' 'Sentimental Bloke' is set in the city, and most of the events related in 'Ginger Mick' do not even occur in Australia, so presumably neither of these books can be classified as 'bush verse'. Mind you, Dennis wasn't really a bush poet anyway.

Next we come to time.

At what point did the era of the 'bush poets' come to an end? Can we safely say around the end of World War One?

This would allow Dennis to just scrape in by the skin of his teeth, although he has already disqualified himself by virtue of both location and general style.

Finally, is Paterson really a 'bush poet' after all? It could be argued that his rhyme and metre was far too polished, if bush poet is to have similar connotations as, say, 'bush lawyer' or 'bush carpenter'. And Lawson wasn't really a poet at all. Wasn't he primarily a writer of short stories? And he didn't live in the bush by choice. He preferred city life, and only went out to Hungerford because a canny newspaper man paid him a lot of money to do so.

It's tricky this whole question of defining 'bush poetry', it's very tricky.

On the other hand, of course, if we accept the ABPA definition, it's really quite simple.

[Mal McLean]

I'm just a poet.

Bush?

General?

I write poetry about Australia and Australians. The city or the bush. The people and the places.

It's enough for me.

I think I'm with Bob and Stephen in all this.

It seems to me that ABPA is the only home for traditional poetry, i.e., rhyming metered poetry, in this loved country of ours.

If there are others I don't know of them. But please, don't make me look for them.

Mal

[Stephen Whiteside]

I think maybe that's what Valerie is trying to say, Neville. And I think most of us have some sympathy with her position. The problem is that it's too narrow, too rigid.

I once heard Greg Champion say that he regarded anywhere east of Warrigal Road as 'the bush'. If you live in Melbourne, you'll find that a very funny comment. I certainly did, partly because there is actually a grain of truth in it.

On the other hand, I imagine there are plenty of people in Australia who regard Alice Springs or Kalgoorlie or Tennant Creek or Mt. Isa or wherever as the 'big smoke'. It's all relative, isn't it.

Of course, at the end of the day it tends to be the perceptions of the city dwellers that 'win out', because that's where most of the people are (and where most of the money is).

[Terry]

G/day Stephen,
It's a bit like the old saying 'How long is a piece of string' isn't it'
Without having a clue of how to resolve this, I don't think this constant talk of needing to change helps, if that's your thinking then do it, but don't keep going on about it, (not you Stephen) I even get a bit fed up with some of it myself at times and I don't care what anyone writes. Yes I know everyone should be entitled to say what they want to but why antagonize as it apparently seems to. It's hard if not impossible to please everybody, but in a spirit mateship perhaps some comps. should be reserved for out and out poetry about the bush and others open to any type of rhyming poetry - just a thought - or is this the case already?

Terry

[Vic Jefferies]

At the risk of repeating myself I think the definition of bush poetry has now become so wide (at least) within the ABPA that no one is really sure what is and what is not bush poetry.
Obviously our current definition of poems about Australia and the Australian way of life written with rhyme and metre does not constrain us to writing about the bush and in fact there is a great deal of poetry written in Australia (and the world) with metre and rhyme which clearly is not bush poetry.
I really do think that what most of us are writing now could be very easily and more clearly described as "Folk Poetry." That is we are very much like folk singers who write and sing about everyday occurrences.
I agree with Val Read it is disappointing to see non bush poems and smut win bush poetry competitions but it is happening more and more.
Our organisation has now become so diverse it is difficult to say just what the future holds.
In reference to the old masters: Lawson wrote on many and varied topics and without checking I would hazard a guess and say most of his poems are not about the bush; Dennis of course wrote very little about the bush while Paterson also wrote on a wide variety of subjects.
As for when did the bush poetry era end well Edward Harrington has often been referred to as the last of the bush balladeers and he died in the 1960's.

Vic Jefferies

[Stephen Whiteside]

So, Vic, I'm confused. If most of us are not bush poets, and Lawson and Dennis were not bush poets, what exactly is a bush poet?

[David Campbell]

Nothing much to add, except to say "thank you" to everyone who's contributed to this thread. A lot of excellent points have been made, providing clear evidence that the flame still burns brightly! Marty's right...Banjo, Henry and the others wrote about their times, as should we about the present. I particularly like the idea that we "write some new history". Off to do just that!

Cheers
David

[David Campbell]

Just to say that I've replied to Valerie by email, although only briefly. We simply have different opinions, that's all, and I doubt there's anything I could add that would change her view in any way. Stephen's comments here clearly illustrate the problems associated with any narrower definition of 'bush' poetry, so I'm sticking with the ABPA version as the way to go.

Cheers
David