THE next few months may decide not only whether we are to survive as a nation, but whether we deserve to survive. As yet none of our achievements prove it, at any rate in the sight of the outer world. We have no monuments to speak of, no dreams in stone, no Guernicas, no sacred places. We could vanish and leave singularly few signs that, for some generations, there had lived a people who had made a homeland of this Australian Earth. A homeland? To how many people was it primarily that? How many penetrated the soil with their love […]

We meet here to offer a tribute of gratitude and affection to the life and work of one of our most dearly loved Australians. Academic practitioners of letters concern themselves with the appraisal of Henry Lawson. It has been their preoccupation through the years to measure him by standard yardsticks and to lean heavily on sticks wielded by men overseas who have known literature, but sometimes have not known Australia. That is to have only half the numbers on the slate, for it has been demonstrated that a writer here can attain to accepted or current standards in his work […]

Literary history—a blend of biography, bibliography, philosophy, sociology, criticism, flour, soda and cream o’tartar—follows in the wake of literature as inevitably as martial history in the wake of war. Moreover it far-reachingly affects the development of letters, imbuing the impressionable young with a prejudice in favour of such things as are selected to be recorded, applauded and permanently enrolled in the national archives. Hence the literary historian bears a high responsibility towards literature and the nation. Now that a mighty geste of spade-work has been performed by Professor Morris Miller in marshalling in their battalions the pen-men of our first […]

‘Poetry’s unnat’ral; no man ever talked poetry ’cept a beadle on boxin’ day, or Warren’s blackin’ or Rowland’s oil, or some o’ them low fellows; never you let yourself down to talk poetry, my boy.’ But we have disregarded Tony Weller’s advice to his son, Samuel. In an age governed by the stomach-and-pocket view of life, and at a time of war and transition, we still strive to ‘talk poetry’. For we believe that it is our duty to do so. We believe that it would be a grave error to suppose the nation can drop its mental life, its […]