Judith Wright
Encyclopedia
Judith Arundell Wright was an Australia
n poet
, environmentalist
and campaigner for Aboriginal land rights.
the eldest child of Phillip Wright and his first wife Ethel, but spent most of her formative years in Brisbane
and Sydney
. Wright was of Cornish
ancestry. After the early death of her mother, she lived with her aunt and then boarded at New England Girls' School
after her father's remarriage in 1929. After graduating, Wright studied philosophy, English, Psychology and history at the University of Sydney
. At the beginning of World War II
she returned to her father's station to help during the shortage of labour caused by the war.
Wright's first book of poetry, The Moving Image, was published in 1946 while she was working at the University of Queensland
as a research officer. At this time she also worked with Clem Christesen
on the literary magazine Meanjin
. In 1950 she moved to Mount Tamborine, Queensland, with the novelist and abstract philosopher Jack McKinney. Their daughter Judy was born in the same year. They married in 1962, although Jack was to live only until 1966. For the last three decades of her life, she lived in the New South Wales town of Braidwood
.
With David Fleay
, Kathleen McArthur
and Brian Clouston
, Judith Wright was a founding member and, from 1964 to 1976, President, of the Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland
. She was the second Australian to receive the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry
, in 1992.
In "In the Garden", Fiona Capp revealed the story of the 25-year secret love affair between two of Australia's most well-known and well-loved public figures, "the famous poet-cum-activist" Judith Wright and "the distinguished yet down-to-earth statesman" H. C. "Nugget" Coombs
. She had moved to Braidwood in order to be closer to Coombs, who was based in Canberra.
She started to lose her hearing in her mid-20s, and became completely deaf by 1992.
Her work is noted for a keen focus on the Australian environment, which began to gain prominence in Australian art in the years following World War II. She deals with the relationship between settlers, Indigenous Australians and the bush, among other themes. Wright's aesthetic centres on the relationship between mankind and the environment, which she views as the catalyst for poetic creation. Her images characteristically draw from the Australian flora and fauna, yet contain a mythic substrata that probes at the poetic process, limitations of language, and the correspondence between inner existence and objective reality.
Her poems have been translated into Italian
, Japanese
and Russian
.
published an expanded edition of Wright's collection titled Birds. Most of these poems were written in the 1950s when she was living on Tamborine Mountain in southeast Queensland
. McKinney, Wright's daughter, writes that they were written at "a precious and dearly-won time of warmth and bounty to counterbalance at last what felt, in contrast, the chilly dearth and difficulty of her earlier years". McKinney goes on to say that "many of these poems have a newly relaxed, almost conversational tone and rhythm, an often humorous ease and an intimacy of voice that surely reflects the new intimacies and joys of her life". Despite the joy reflected in the poems, however, they also acknowledge "the experiences of cruelty, pain and death that are inseparable from the lives of birds as of humans ... and [turn] a sorrowing a clear-sighted gaze on the terrible damage we have done and continue to do to our world, even as we love it".
and Fraser Island. With some friends, she helped found one of the earliest nature conservation movements.
She was also an impassioned advocate for the Aboriginal land rights movement. Tom Shapcott, reviewing With Love and Fury, her posthumous collection of selected letters published in 2007, comments that her letter on this topic to the Australian Prime Minister John Howard
was "almost brutal in its scorn". Shortly before her death, she attended a march in Canberra
for reconciliation between non-indigenous Australians and the Aboriginal people.
Judith Wright died in Canberra on 26 June 2000, aged 85.
(AEC) announced that the new federal electorate in Queensland
to be created at the 2007 federal election would be named Wright in honour of her life as a "poet and in the areas of arts, conservation and indigenous affairs in Queensland and Australia". However, in September 2006 the AEC announced it would name the seat after John Flynn
, the founder of the Royal Flying Doctor Service, due to numerous objections from people fearing the name Wright may be linked to disgraced former Queensland Labor MP Keith Wright
. Under the 2009 redistribution of Queensland, a new seat
in southeast Queensland was created and named in Wright's honour; it was first contested in 2010.
The Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts
in Brisbane's Fortitude Valley is named after her.
On 2 January 2008, it was announced that a future suburb in the district of Molonglo Valley
, Canberra
will be named "Wright". There is already a street in the Canberra suburb of Franklin
named after her. Another of the Molonglo Valley suburbs is to be named after Wright's lover, "Nugget" Coombs.
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
n poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
, environmentalist
Environmentalist
An environmentalist broadly supports the goals of the environmental movement, "a political and ethical movement that seeks to improve and protect the quality of the natural environment through changes to environmentally harmful human activities"...
and campaigner for Aboriginal land rights.
Biography
Judith Wright was born in Armidale, New South WalesArmidale, New South Wales
Armidale is a city in the Northern Tablelands, New South Wales, Australia. Armidale Dumaresq Shire had a population of 19,485 people according to the 2006 census. It is the administrative centre for the Northern Tablelands region...
the eldest child of Phillip Wright and his first wife Ethel, but spent most of her formative years in Brisbane
Brisbane
Brisbane is the capital and most populous city in the Australian state of Queensland and the third most populous city in Australia. Brisbane's metropolitan area has a population of over 2 million, and the South East Queensland urban conurbation, centred around Brisbane, encompasses a population of...
and Sydney
Sydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...
. Wright was of Cornish
Cornish people
The Cornish are a people associated with Cornwall, a county and Duchy in the south-west of the United Kingdom that is seen in some respects as distinct from England, having more in common with the other Celtic parts of the United Kingdom such as Wales, as well as with other Celtic nations in Europe...
ancestry. After the early death of her mother, she lived with her aunt and then boarded at New England Girls' School
New England Girls' School
The New England Girls' School , is an independent, Anglican, day and boarding school for girls, located in Armidale, a rural city in northern New South Wales, Australia....
after her father's remarriage in 1929. After graduating, Wright studied philosophy, English, Psychology and history at the University of Sydney
University of Sydney
The University of Sydney is a public university located in Sydney, New South Wales. The main campus spreads across the suburbs of Camperdown and Darlington on the southwestern outskirts of the Sydney CBD. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and Oceania...
. At the beginning of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
she returned to her father's station to help during the shortage of labour caused by the war.
Wright's first book of poetry, The Moving Image, was published in 1946 while she was working at the University of Queensland
University of Queensland
The University of Queensland, also known as UQ, is a public university located in state of Queensland, Australia. Founded in 1909, it is the oldest and largest university in Queensland and the fifth oldest in the nation...
as a research officer. At this time she also worked with Clem Christesen
Clem Christesen
Clement Byrne Christesen was the founder of the Australian literary magazine, Meanjin. He served as the magazine's editor from 1940 until 1974.-Early years:...
on the literary magazine Meanjin
Meanjin
Meanjin is an Australian literary journal. The name - pronounced Mee-AN-jin - is derived from an Aboriginal word for the land where the city Brisbane is located.It was founded in December 1940, in Brisbane, by Clem Christesen...
. In 1950 she moved to Mount Tamborine, Queensland, with the novelist and abstract philosopher Jack McKinney. Their daughter Judy was born in the same year. They married in 1962, although Jack was to live only until 1966. For the last three decades of her life, she lived in the New South Wales town of Braidwood
Braidwood, New South Wales
Braidwood is a town in the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales, Australia, in Palerang Shire. It is located on the busy Kings Highway linking Canberra to Batemans Bay on the coast. It is about 200 kilometres south west of Sydney and about 60 kilometres inland from the coast...
.
With David Fleay
David Fleay
David Howells Fleay was an Australian naturalist who pioneered the captive breeding of endangered species, and was the first person to breed the platypus in captivity....
, Kathleen McArthur
Kathleen McArthur
Kathleen McArthur , was an Australian naturalist, writer, botanical illustrator and conservationist. She was born in Brisbane, Queensland to Catherine and Daniel Evans. Her mother was a daughter of the Durack pastoral family, her father a co-founder of an engineering firm. She married Malcolm...
and Brian Clouston
Brian Clouston
Brian Clouston is a British landscape architect, and founder of Brian Clouston and Partners once the largest landscape architecture practice in Europe. Clouston was trained at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh and at the University of Newcastle...
, Judith Wright was a founding member and, from 1964 to 1976, President, of the Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland
Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland
The Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland is a Queensland based conservation organisation. The Society was founded in 1962 by Judith Wright, Brian Clouston, David Fleay and Kathleen McArthur...
. She was the second Australian to receive the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry
Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry
The Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry is awarded for a book of verse published by someone in any of the Commonwealth realms. Originally the award was open only to British subjects living in the United Kingdom, but in 1985 the scope was extended to include people from the rest of the Commonwealth realms...
, in 1992.
In "In the Garden", Fiona Capp revealed the story of the 25-year secret love affair between two of Australia's most well-known and well-loved public figures, "the famous poet-cum-activist" Judith Wright and "the distinguished yet down-to-earth statesman" H. C. "Nugget" Coombs
H. C. Coombs
Herbert Cole H.C. "Nugget" Coombs was an Australian economist and public servant.-Early years:Coombs was born in Kalamunda, Western Australia, Australia, one of six children of a country railway station-master and a well-read mother.Coombs's political and economic views were formed by the Great...
. She had moved to Braidwood in order to be closer to Coombs, who was based in Canberra.
She started to lose her hearing in her mid-20s, and became completely deaf by 1992.
Poet and critic
Judith Wright was the author of several collections of poetry, including The Moving Image, Woman to Man, The Gateway, The Two Fires, Birds, The Other Half, Magpies, Shadow and much much more. She was a lover of nature too.Her work is noted for a keen focus on the Australian environment, which began to gain prominence in Australian art in the years following World War II. She deals with the relationship between settlers, Indigenous Australians and the bush, among other themes. Wright's aesthetic centres on the relationship between mankind and the environment, which she views as the catalyst for poetic creation. Her images characteristically draw from the Australian flora and fauna, yet contain a mythic substrata that probes at the poetic process, limitations of language, and the correspondence between inner existence and objective reality.
Her poems have been translated into Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
and Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
.
Birds
In 2003, the National Library of AustraliaAustralia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
published an expanded edition of Wright's collection titled Birds. Most of these poems were written in the 1950s when she was living on Tamborine Mountain in southeast Queensland
Queensland
Queensland is a state of Australia, occupying the north-eastern section of the mainland continent. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, south-west and south respectively. To the east, Queensland is bordered by the Coral Sea and Pacific Ocean...
. McKinney, Wright's daughter, writes that they were written at "a precious and dearly-won time of warmth and bounty to counterbalance at last what felt, in contrast, the chilly dearth and difficulty of her earlier years". McKinney goes on to say that "many of these poems have a newly relaxed, almost conversational tone and rhythm, an often humorous ease and an intimacy of voice that surely reflects the new intimacies and joys of her life". Despite the joy reflected in the poems, however, they also acknowledge "the experiences of cruelty, pain and death that are inseparable from the lives of birds as of humans ... and [turn] a sorrowing a clear-sighted gaze on the terrible damage we have done and continue to do to our world, even as we love it".
Environmentalist and social activist
Wright was well known for her campaigning in support of the conservation of the Great Barrier ReefGreat Barrier Reef
The Great Barrier Reef is the world'slargest reef system composed of over 2,900 individual reefs and 900 islands stretching for over 2,600 kilometres over an area of approximately...
and Fraser Island. With some friends, she helped found one of the earliest nature conservation movements.
She was also an impassioned advocate for the Aboriginal land rights movement. Tom Shapcott, reviewing With Love and Fury, her posthumous collection of selected letters published in 2007, comments that her letter on this topic to the Australian Prime Minister John Howard
John Howard
John Winston Howard AC, SSI, was the 25th Prime Minister of Australia, from 11 March 1996 to 3 December 2007. He was the second-longest serving Australian Prime Minister after Sir Robert Menzies....
was "almost brutal in its scorn". Shortly before her death, she attended a march in Canberra
Canberra
Canberra is the capital city of Australia. With a population of over 345,000, it is Australia's largest inland city and the eighth-largest city overall. The city is located at the northern end of the Australian Capital Territory , south-west of Sydney, and north-east of Melbourne...
for reconciliation between non-indigenous Australians and the Aboriginal people.
Judith Wright died in Canberra on 26 June 2000, aged 85.
Awards
- 1994 - Human Rights and Equal Opportunity CommissionHuman Rights and Equal Opportunity CommissionThe Australian Human Rights Commission is a national human rights institution, a statutory body funded by, but operating independently of, the Australian Government. It has the responsibility for investigating alleged infringements under Australia’s anti-discrimination legislation...
Poetry Award for Collected Poems
Recognition
In June 2006 the Australian Electoral CommissionAustralian Electoral Commission
The Australian Electoral Commission, or the AEC, is the federal government agency in charge of organising and supervising federal elections and referendums. State and local government elections are overseen by the Electoral Commission in each state and territory.The Australian Electoral Commission...
(AEC) announced that the new federal electorate in Queensland
Queensland
Queensland is a state of Australia, occupying the north-eastern section of the mainland continent. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, south-west and south respectively. To the east, Queensland is bordered by the Coral Sea and Pacific Ocean...
to be created at the 2007 federal election would be named Wright in honour of her life as a "poet and in the areas of arts, conservation and indigenous affairs in Queensland and Australia". However, in September 2006 the AEC announced it would name the seat after John Flynn
John Flynn (minister)
John Flynn OBE was an Australian Presbyterian minister who founded the Royal Flying Doctor Service, the world's first air ambulance.-Biography:...
, the founder of the Royal Flying Doctor Service, due to numerous objections from people fearing the name Wright may be linked to disgraced former Queensland Labor MP Keith Wright
Keith Wright (Australian politician)
Keith Webb Wright is a former Australian politician and convicted rapist. Born in Toowoomba, Queensland, he was educated at the University of Queensland and Kelvin Grove Teachers College in Brisbane before becoming a teacher and author....
. Under the 2009 redistribution of Queensland, a new seat
Division of Wright
The Division of Wright is an Australian Electoral Division in the state of Queensland. The seat was first contested at the 2010 election. The division was created under the Australian Electoral Commission's 2009 Redistribution of Queensland. The division of Wright covers a large area of the Gold...
in southeast Queensland was created and named in Wright's honour; it was first contested in 2010.
The Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts
Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts
The Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts in Fortitude Valley in Brisbane, Queensland provides a 300-seat performance space, art gallery, artist studios, screening room and workshops with theatre rehearsal spaces for music, dance and circus. Opened in 2001 it is named after Judith Wright, who...
in Brisbane's Fortitude Valley is named after her.
On 2 January 2008, it was announced that a future suburb in the district of Molonglo Valley
Molonglo Valley
Molonglo Valley is the newest district of Canberra. The district is planned to consist of 13 suburbs containing 33,000 dwellings with an expected population of 73,000....
, Canberra
Canberra
Canberra is the capital city of Australia. With a population of over 345,000, it is Australia's largest inland city and the eighth-largest city overall. The city is located at the northern end of the Australian Capital Territory , south-west of Sydney, and north-east of Melbourne...
will be named "Wright". There is already a street in the Canberra suburb of Franklin
Franklin, Australian Capital Territory
Franklin is a suburb of Canberra, Australia in the district of Gungahlin. It is named after the novelist Miles Franklin. The streets in Franklin are named after writers. It comprises an area of approximately 256 hectares...
named after her. Another of the Molonglo Valley suburbs is to be named after Wright's lover, "Nugget" Coombs.
Further reading
- Brady, Veronica (1998) South of My Days: A Biography of Judith Wright, Angus & RobertsonAngus & RobertsonAngus & Robertson is a bookstore chain in Australia. Its first bookstore was opened in 110½ Market Street, Sydney by Scotsman David Angus in 1884; it sold second-hand books. In 1886, he went into partnership with fellow Scot, George Robertson with whom he had worked earlier.- Bookselling history...
ISBN 0207188572
External links
- Poems at Oldpoetry.com
- Vale Judith Wright Interview at Radio NationalRadio NationalABC Radio National is an Australia-wide non-commercial radio network run by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.Radio National broadcasts national programming in areas that include news and current affairs, the arts, social issues, science, drama and comedy...
- Gardening at the 'Edge': Judith Wright's desert garden, Mongarlowe, New South Wales by Katie Holmes
- Judith Wright's Biography: A Delicate Balance between Trespass and Honour by Veronica Brady
- Uncertain Possession: The Politics and Poetry of Judith Wright by Gig RyanGig RyanGig Ryan, born Elizabeth Anna Martina Ryan, 5 November 1956, is an Australian poet, and daughter of notable Australian surgeon Peter John Ryan...
- The Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts Website
- Two Fires: Festival of Arts and Activism Celebration of Judith Wright's legacy
- Sue King-Smith 'Ancestral Echoes: Spectres of the Past in Judith Wright's Poetry' JASAL Special Issue 2007