Can bush poetry survive?

[manfredvijars]

Those drunken gum trees standing in the middle of a roundabout, just waiting to pounce ...

[Neville Briggs]

Very interesting points Manfred about the trials of the Country Music and the Folk music.

Henry , Banjo etc wrote about their times , what they saw , who they met etc . What would they write about if they were still alive ? I'm guessing it would be about what they see , who they meet etc . Lets not lose sight of where we have come from ,it is our history , but lets write some new history

I have to say this Marty..no I can't...I must...no I can't ...yes I can.. I agree with you.

[Neville Briggs]

I dunno Stephen,
I think I know what you are trying to say. I suppose in our urbanised society we still can't get away from the enormous " spiritual " power of a huge continental mass which we know or suspect is a challenge for humans to come to terms with.
So maybe " the bush " is an idea that reflects back at us when we take even a brief look at that vastness out there.


Just my attempt to make sense of it.

[Neville Briggs]

At the moment, the only thought I have on this discussion is that what will certainly diminish bush poetry or any other poetry, is contention over definitions, categories and fine thematic distinctions.

To bush or not to bush, that is the question........ we don't need to ask.

[Terry]

Hi Neville,

Personally I don't think it will make a scrap of difference mate,

This discussion or variations of it have been going on for years and I don't think too many friendships have suffered because of it. Certainly hope not from anything I may have posted.

Cheers Terry

[Irene]

It appears to me that the controversy is about a persons perception of bush poetry.
I know what the definition on our website says, and it is that that I work to - but where did that definition come from, and what would the 'purist bush poets' such as Val class as bush poetry? What would be her definition? What would be the definition of our 'older' poets who have been writing long before the discussion became so divided on what actually constitutes 'bush' poetry?

As Terry says, the discussion has been going on for a long time, and will never be resolved to everyone's satisfaction.
Me - I'l just keep on writing!!! (well, if the muse ever comes back, that is!!! )

Catchya
Irene

[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