Quarantined spaces, groups and a crisis of modernism

Australian poetry after World War II has been strangely isolated from other poetries in English. The usual arguments are that the war, with its massive influx of American troops and the expeditions of Australian soldiers overseas, broke up the intactness of Australian arts in the same way as happened with its economy and society. Similar arguments are made in the context of the Great War, but these are often more enthusiastic than factual. Reaching back further, though Australia is so physically isolated, especially prior to air travel, its post-settlement/invasion poetry has been seen as an extension of primarily European, particularly British–Irish poetries, in essence an ongoing colonial poetry.

I believe, however, that this is untrue. The isolation of Australian poetry and poetics has evolved more from choice than from circumstances, and its quality comes about from very specific relationships between a consciousness of the uniqueness of the Australian landscape, and the enormity of dispossessing Indigenous peoples whose relationship with that land is so specific, varied, and complex. This is not to say such conditions have not existed elsewhere, but Australia has been resistant to (if deeply troubled about) its place in the broader international community.

Even now, in an age of easy air travel and ready communications of diverse kinds, a reiteration of uniqueness and separateness still underlies much Australian writing. It seeks to set itself apart. And even in cases where anthologists try to be inclusive, or connect with other parts of the world, Australia is constantly defined as such a different space that connection must come through the migrant experience, economics, or other material exchange. An example is an anthology I recently co-edited with Alvin Pang, Over There, which juxtaposes contemporary Australian and contemporary Singaporean poets while keeping them in their respective country spaces.