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6 - Experiment and Adaptation

Modernist Poetry in Australia

from Part II - Networks

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 June 2024

By
Aidan Coleman
Edited by
Ann Vickery
Ann Vickery
Affiliation:
Deakin University, Victoria
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Summary

This chapter outlines how Christopher Brennan ushered in an experimental strand of Australian poetry through his engagement with French Symbolism, which was followed by John Shaw Nielson’s celebration of intuition and the more-than-human. It considers Nietzschean vitalism in Kenneth Slessor’s representation of urban Sydney and analyses the beauty and nihilism of his “Five Bells.” The chapter also argues that Lesbia Harford’s poetry was modernist in its radical openness about female sexuality and the female body, its minimalist representation of the working life of modern women, and lack of Romantic assumptions in her treatment of the natural world. It further considers the rhetorical force and frankness of queer desire in the work of Anna Wickham, before addressing the hoax poet Ern Malley.

Keywords

modernismSymbolismVitalism
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Companion to Australian Poetry , pp. 101 - 118
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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References

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