Chaucer Geoffrey Chaucer (Circa 1340 – 1400) # Chaucer, one of England’s first writers, did more than anyone to prepare a place for the English language in the world’s literary canons. Though more fluent in French, Chaucer chose to write in Middle English, the bastard language of Germanic origins, but the vernacular of England. His writings raised the level of the Germanic over the Norman French establishing the canon of English after Beowulf.

Introduction To Bruce Dawe BRUCE DAWE # Biographical Born in Geelong, Victoria —1930, - Son of a Labourer Sister had verse published Father sang ballads,- Mother recited poems of l9^(th) C. Brother & he read: Westerns, thrillers and sci-fi. Education: Left school early and worked at odd jobs, - farm hand, handyman, gardener and postman. Dawe joined the R.A.A.F for 9 YRS Later studied at University part-time, - gaining a B.

I Died For Beauty Analysis I died for beauty but was Scarce # Socrates and Plato extolled the virtue of aesthetic beauty as transcendent – inspiring people to aspire towards godliness, while ugliness was descendent, dragging people down towards evil and Hell. Most Philosophers and artists assume that all art aspires towards the beautiful. It is through the celebration of beauty that we can escape the tawdry, the banality of ordinary pedestrian life.

Biography John Donne John Donne a biography 1572 – 1631 # (Shakespeare’s time 1564 - 1616) Donne’s birth date is not certain; it between January to June 1572. Donne’s Father died when John was 3 years old and his brother Henry died of gaol fever for harbouring a Catholic priest. His mother remarried a wealthy man (related to Thomas More) so Donne was educated at both Oxford and Cambridge, but unable to graduate because as a Catholic he would have to swear allegiance to a Protestant Queen.

Home Of Mercy Gwen Harwood HOME OF MERCY # This is an early poem illustrating an angry bitter Gwen Harwood. An uncompromisingly hard edged indictment of how we treat the disadvantaged. No holds barred – no punches pulled. A complete negation of Christian charity; love and dutiful care. This poem is about a Catholic convent in Toowong, Queensland. Home of Mercy # By two and two the ruined girls are walking at the neat margin of the convent grass

Animal Poems Animal Poems # Ted Hughes wrote a lot of poems centring on the primaeval passion of the natural world that combusts us into the supernatural. Gerald Hughes, his elder brother by nine years, in his book, Ted and I, recounts an anecdote at school, where a teacher commenting on Ted’s description of “a wildflower’s gun breaking in the cold with frost chilled snap” - That’s poetry! Ted’s response, “Well if that’s poetry, that’s the way I think and I can give you no end of it”.

Biography of Robert Lowell Robert Lowell # Robert Lowell is often considered the doyen of what is called “Confessional Poetry” in the tradition of Gerard Manly Hopkin’s. Kay Redfield Jamison in “Robert Lowell, Setting the River on Fire: A Study of Genius, Mania, and Character”, claims though he became a public person, he was never a public poet; he was, instead, a figure beheld in contemplation, working out the meanings of his thinking in plain view with what Joyce Carol Oates called Lowell’s ironic dignity”.

Black Rook Black Rook In Rainy Weather - Sylvia Plath # This can be read as a response to Ted Hughes The Hawk in the Rain, in what may be reciprocal contests. It appears to be her first impressions of the English countryside. The poem has many other antecedents like Edgar Alan Poe’s The Raven, Alfred Lord Tennyson’s The Eagle, or less likely Gerard Manly Hopkins’ The Windhover. Sylvia Plath writes evocatively about landscapes and nature.

Poetic Devices # Poetry is sensual; it appeals to our five senses, affecting our emotions, feelings and moods. Since Poetry appeals to our ears the most, the sound effects used by poets are very important. Words are chosen for their sound effects. To get the most benefit from poetry it should be read aloud (recited) or even sung. Verbal music includes: rhyme, rhythm, assonance, melody, pitch, slow, fast, light, heavy, alliteration, onomatopoeia, blending of words, repetition patterns, tone, voice, mood, atmosphere.

Peter Skrzynecki and Belonging Peter Skrzynecki (pronounced sher-neski) is a popular poet living in Sydney’s suburb of Eastwood. He was born in war torn Germany on April 6, 1945, 24 days before Germany surrendered to the Allies. His step-father was a displaced Polish migrant in Germany while his mother was born in the Ukraine. They lived in Germany for four years after Peter was born and then began a two year migration process that ended in Australia.

Beach Burial Slessor Analysis BEACH BURIAL # Background and Context - Beach Burial # In 1940, Kenneth Slessor became Australia’s official war correspondent first reporting from Northern Africa. It was a battle in El Alamein, an obscure railway stop west of Alexandria that in the course of a few days became known around the world for turning the fortunes of war. In November 1942, the Allied Eighth Army, comprised of at least 10 nations of the British Empire, broke German and Italian lines to push Rommel’s Axis troops back to Tunisia and defeat in Africa.

Bora Bora Bora Bora # According to her daughter, Meredith McKinney, Judith fought two big campaigns in her life – the first was for the conservation of the environment and the second was to secure land rights for the Aboriginal people. Her interest in Aboriginal land rights was sparked by her friendship with fellow poet Oodgeroo Noonuccal (Kath Walker). Early White settlers thought it impossible for first inhabitants capable of making art or song worth the western eyes or ears.

Art And Violence In Yeats Violence and Art # Yeats had some deeply held opinions on the role of the Artist in history. Violence was very much a part of the rise and fall of most civilisations. Researchers today recognise that we live in much more civilised times, though the scale and intensity of violence may merely have become more remote. Yeats accepts violence as part of change. He saw war as a necessary purification of nations.

Coleridge Coleridge, a Romantic poet, extols the power of the imagination over that of logic. Logic appeals to the mind, but imagination is more holistic, affecting the mind, the senses, the emotions and the visceral. Through imagination we are taken on journeys that pierce the exterior and penetrate to the core, and conceive the real essence of things, especially in nature. Word association, incantatory spells and other sound effects grip us and we are carried along vicariously in an imaginary journey with the composer.

Figures of Speech # T.S. Eliot claims: “Emotions are sometimes too complex for simple rational language and the thoughts too deep for intellectual articulation. For this reason, Poets resort to metaphor, images, rhythm, style and myth." T.S. Eliot further maintaines: “The reader’s interpretation may be different from the author’s and be equally valid – it may even be better. There may be much more in a poem than the author is aware of.

Wot is Poetry? # Aristotle’s profound observation: “The superiority of poetry over history consists in its possessing a higher truth and a higher seriousness”. Can we separate the poet from their poetry? There persists a view that poets are driven to write about the excruciating emotions of the human experience. Like philosophers, many are not people you’d want to be friends with. Virginia Woolf warns: “For if it is rash to walk into a lion’s den unarmed, rash to navigate the Atlantic in a rowing boat, rash to stand on one foot on top of St.

A Hug a Day keeps the Doctor Away** # Laura Barton – The Guardian Humans crave physical contact and it does much more than just create a warm, fuzzy feeling. “EVERYONE Needs Touch, especially the elderly” says Beata Aleksandrowicz, a massage therapist. Bertrand Russell once wrote: “Not only our geometry and our physics, but our whole conception of what exists outside us is based upon the sense of touch.”