Contemporary Australian Poetry

This course introduces students to Australian poetry from the period 1965 through to the present, a period in which it responded vigorously to international movements in poetry such modernism, postmodernism and L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry and other avant garde movements. Beginning with a pre-history of the failure of Australian poetry to engage in any significant way with European and North American Modernism, the course then examines the introduction into Australian poetry of free verse in the 1960s. It then examines the so-called avant gardist generation of '68, and the conservative reaction against them through the 1970s and 1980s, commonly referred to as the 'poetry wars'. This period also saw the rise to prominence of many important women poets as well as several poets writing in Aboriginal English.