Chapter 17 - Australia and New Zealand

Summary

English-language poetry of the First World War is still largely thought of through the filter of the same dozen or so much-anthologised and now-canonised British poets: Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Rupert Brooke, Isaac Rosenberg, Edward Thomas, et al. One dominant image of the war, and of poetic responses to it, has become almost entirely created by their adhesive poems: initial idealism succeeded by protest and pity. To engage with the First World War poetry of Australians Leon Gellert and C. J. Dennis, New Zealanders Alfred Clark and Donald Lea, and Maori ‘action song’ writers Sir Apirana Ngata and Paraire Henare Tomoana is to have that dominant image significantly modified and complicated. In their work, myths of nation-building, larrikin heroics, and imperial sacrifice jostle uncomfortably with scenes of horror, dark comedy, and stoicism. In particular, a number of Leon Gellert’s Gallipoli poems stand comparison with the best of the established canon.