Australian eco-pastoral poetry

Les Murray and Judith Wright are two Australian poets who are widely read as landscape poets.\ud While this framing offers valuable insights into their work it often fails to bring the importance\ud into a contemporary context or to recognise the long tradition Australia has had with , to use\ud Leo Marx’ term, “the complex pastoral”. As Ruth Blair reminds us in her chapter “Hugging the\ud Shore: The Green Mountains of South-East Queensland” in The Littoral Zone: Australian\ud Contexts and their Writers it is accepted that North America has a tradition of the complex\ud pastoral mode but it should be remembered that Australia also has a long history of this form.\ud Both Judith Wright’s and Les Murray’s poetry encourages active campaigning for the\ud environment .These Australian poets are eco-pastoral poets whose poetry encourages active\ud reading rather than passive reflections. Their poetry speaks to the strong connection between\ud the lived everyday landscape and the imagination of past, present and future. Their work is\ud imbued with a strong sense of ecocritical awareness while at the same time drawing on\ud pastoral conventions. These two Australian poets do not offer idealistic pastoral notions but\ud rather reveal the complexities of lived human/nonhuman relationships. This paper will discuss\ud these complexities and how poetry can be experienced as literature in action—ways for readers\ud to connect with and negotiate with the land they inhabit. The research for this paper was, in\ud part, drawn from the responses that local community library groups offered after reading the\ud works of these poets. What became evident from this research was the way the poetry made\ud the readers think not only of landscape as a place of refuge from the urban technological world\ud but also as a contemporary place with connection to agency that motivates readers into active change