AUSTRALIAN POETS

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31017, 24 March 1966, Page 16

AUSTRALIAN POETS

Realism Of Outlook

“Australian poets have usually been active men and women,” said Professor Greta Hort. Professor Hort, who is professor of English literature at Aarhus University, Denmark, was speaking on •‘Romanticism in Australian Literature" at a meeting of the Canterbury English Association. Professor Hort mentioned poets who worked as labourers, forest workers, or shop assistants. One was a jockey. Unlike most of the English poets, they were not part of a leisured class concerned with its own culture, she said.

Because Australian poets had little time for writing, their poems were usually short, said Professor Hort. A nore important result was that even the so-called romantics among them were basically realistic. This was shown by the accuracy of their descriptions and comparisons. They had usually seen Nature from a human point of view, and not with a mystical outlook, she said. One example was in a poem which emphasised the importance of one type of bell-bird because it could lead men to water. English poets, who could easily drink when they were thirsty, did not react in this way. Professor Hort said there had been a change in Australian poetry when education became more general and poets started to be more learned and more aware of themselves. She suggested that this effect might not last.