remembering Judith Wright Did we not know their blood channelled our rivers and the black dust our crops ate was their dust? JW* come back meet us under the pepper trees rugged up against Braidwood’s autumn air in your caramel three-quarter coat beanie and flat ribbed shoes come back shuffle the years like a pack…
Author: michaelgriffith1
Stephen Mason at “Called to Be..” inspired by Judith Wright’s poem “Water”
Here first is Judith Wright’s poem “Water” from her 1966 book The Other Half (page 240 of Collected Poems, page 223 of the Second Edition of CP) Water Water in braids and tumbles, shells of spray, heaves of clear glass and solemn greeneyed pools, eel-coils and quick meanders, goes its way fretting this savage basalt…
Andrew Fraser’s poem reflecting on his involvement with the Anti-Fracking campaign in solidarity with the Indigenous Gomeroi people near Coonabarabran
The poem below came out of my involvement with the anti- fracking campaign currently being waged by unionists, farmers and environmentalists in solidarity with the Gomeroi people. We are concerned about the impact of drilling 800 gas wells in the Pilliga.I was honoured when Gomeroi Elder, Auntie Sue Ellen invited me to read the poem…
Another poem by Andrew Fraser- with particular pertinence to Judith Wright’s horror of violence- both in Australia and overseas.
The current conflict in Gaza reminded me of one of my poems called ‘Hath Not a Jew Eyes’. The title is a quote from Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice and I was thinking of the terrible suffering of the Palestinian people at the hands of the Israelis when I wrote it. The poem questions the Zionist philosophy of…
Andrew Fraser on Judith Wright
Andrew Fraser: Thank you for your contribution – a thoughtful and creative reflection on Judith Wright’s “The Wattle Tree” which inspired your poem “Sydney Easter Show” – thank you! I first encountered Judith Wright, when I studied The Wattle Tree in Michael Griffith’s Poetry and Being class run online at the Aquinas Academy in September…
On Judith Wright: Steve Mason
Thank you Steve, for this wonderful response to some of the poems and imagery that we explored last week. You are able to fuse key moments from Judith Wright’s haiku-like poems with her deep appreciation of Francis Webb’s imagistic power. Great work! You bring our two hour session vividly to life. – Michael From Summer:…
At Edge- Visit of Silver Wattle’s Poetry and the Spirit Group to Judith Wright’s cultural and natural environments in and around Braidwood.
Anthology of Poems by Participants at Poetry and Spirit:Judith Wright event at Silver Wattle.
Poem by Anne Benjamin Haiku by Anne Benjamin *** morning hour of meditation – fog shifts and lifts ** Haiku with Photograph from Paul Carter Moon-set firm in space By force, or love. Branches of How we view this place. HAIKU BY DOROTHY SCOTT HAIKU BY MERRILYN JULIAN Here is a contribution by Stephen Mason…
Braidwood Heritage Walk
https://visitqueanbeyanpalerang.com.au/explore/braidwood-heritage-walk/ HISTORY OF BRAIDWOOD: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braidwood,_New_South_Wales#:~:text=The%20area%20was%20first%20settled,the%20region%20are%20still%20standing. THE TWO FIRES FESTIVAL AT BRAIDWOOD
TWO FIRES BURNING: ABC BROADCAST (TRANSCRIPT) OF THE TWO FIRES FESTIVAL AT BRAIDWOOD.
Judith Wright: Poetry and Spirit
This category has been created to support the week-long course that I am conducting at the Quaker Silver-Wattle Centre on the shores of Lake George near Canberra. You can find full details here: https://www.silverwattle.org.au/upcoming-courses This is where I will be sharing new content as it comes to hand and where I will also be posting…
POETRY AND SPIRIT- PARTICIPANT FEEDBACK
2023 Poetry and Spirit, Participant feedback PLEASE CLICK ON THE LINK AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS POST SWQC, Residential, March 9 – 15 2023 (postponed from December 2022) Course Leader: Michael Griffith Course Elder: Duncan Frewin Now that this course is over Silver Wattle Quaker Centre would appreciate your feedback to help us plan for…
Quaker Silver Wattle Centre and Judith Wright
PLEASE CLICK ON THE LINK BELOW FOR MORE DETAILS https://www.silverwattle.org.au/upcoming-courses
19thCLit, 21st Century Lit, 4 Quartets, Extra-Mural Teaching, Francis Webb, Grace IV: Contemplative Experience, Literature in Time and Space ENGL111, Literature: An Introduction, NSW Art Gallery, Oz Lit, Poetry and Being, Poetry of Grace @ Aquinas, Poetry of Grace IV Contemplative Experience, SLA Conference, x Blogging
1000 Years of Poetry and the Contemplative Tradition
England 2023: Overview Please join me on this pilgrimage which begins in July 2023. Find all the details at the following link: 1000 Years of Poetry and the Contemplative Tradition England 2023 The adventure begins in London on the site where Chaucer’s pilgrims set out in 1390. Next comes Canterbury, with its Cathedral, St Augustine’s Abbey,…
Poems submitted after Week 3 of Poetry and Being
Poem and commentary contributed by Andrew Fraser “The core of TS Eliot’s poem Little Gidding, is in my view the line; ‘A condition of complete simplicity’ This ties in with his theme of the ’still point’ running through the complete work , Four Quartets of which Little Gidding is part. When I wrote the Indigenous Prophet, I was imagining all of creation, as…
Presentation Slides for Week 3 Poetry and Being
Please be sure to visit the White Board for these Slides in the post below…….
White Board, Poetry and Being WEek 3
White Board Week 3 Poetry and Being Dear All, Thank you all for being such a wonderful group. It was a joy for me to explore these, some of my favourite, poems with you over the last three weeks. Poetry is a definite support for my own spiritual understanding and a way of connecting me…
Poems from the Call-to-Be group on Poetry and Being Week 2 (September 14th 2022)
Andrew Fraser has submitted another 3 poems based on his responses to class this week. I include the notes he sent me that indicate how the poems arose from the poems we studied and the class interactions. Thank you so much Andrew for your sophisticated responses to the poems and your effort of compiling these…
Presentation Slides for Week 2
White Board for Week 2 Poetry and Being: Discussions on R.S. Thomas, Mary Oliver and T.S. Eliot
WHITE BOARD: POETRY AND BEING WEEK 2 Responses to general introduction: John– wondering whether poetry, like in music, uses pauses to create and capture meaning? Jonathan…. That’s why poetry breaks into lines. There is athe mental pause at end of each line which has a similar function. Michael- also the stanza/verse structure of many poems…
Poems from the Call-to-Be group on Poetry and Being Week 1 (September 7th 2022)
Microsoft Word – Barangaroo and Benelong.docx Barangaroo and BenelongBarangaroo sings sad songs from North centreOf the Grassy Grotto amphitheatre.She fronts and laughs at the White Man’s Phallus, To emasculate Terra Nullius.Benelong wakes from the mist to the EastAnd presides at a grand opera feast.He sings of the Cross raised in 08When World’s Youth saw in…
Week 1& 2 Poetry and Being
Thank you all for your wonderful level of participation in this first week of our exploration. Here are some of the materials we used this week. First you will find the notes from the White Board. Second you will find the presentation itself (for this week and next week). After that you will find a…
19thCLit, 21st Century Lit, 4 Quartets, American Literature, Australian Literature, Exploring Literature (Clemente), Extra-Mural Teaching, Francis Webb, Literature in Time and Space ENGL111, Literature: An Introduction, Literature: An Introduction 2020, New York, Nineteenth, Nineteenth Century Literature Test, NSW Art Gallery, Oz Lit, Poetry of Grace @ Aquinas, Poetry Workshops, Reading Australia, Research and Writing, Rilke, Shakespeare Plus, The Sacred in Literature and the Arts, Twentieth Century Literature ENGL202, Visionary Blake, Visionary Imagination, William Blake, Wisdom, x Blogging
Greetings and farewell from A/Prof Michael Griffith (Literature: Strathfield)
I am retiring after 45 years at ACU. While it certainly sounds a long time, I remember vividly my first days on Castle Hill Campus in 1977 and then the flow of new literature students, through Castle Hill, then Mount Saint Mary and occasionally MacKillop. Every year a wonderful crop of new faces, new enthusiasms!…
Best Final Summative Entries 2022 Shakespeare and the Renaissance…
These are the best of a wonderful bunch of final blogs by students of ENGL210 in 2022. These blogs show the depth of appreciation for Shakespeare and the Renaissance that these students have uncovered for themselves through writing informally and creatively and through interacting with their peers. Some of the best learning in all my…
Best Final Summative Blogs for Nineteenth Century Literature 2022
Hi All, it is with some real joy that I can post up these final blogs from one of my last two classes (the other being The Age of Shakespeare). These summative entries proclaim loud and clear that the experience of blogging as part of literature studies has profoundly enhanced our students’ experience of literature.…
Nineteenth Century Blogs Fourth and Final Topics: Week 10
Please remember that you are permitted to create your own blog topics on subjects related to what we have been studying – if these topics don’t suit! Tolstoy: The Death of Ivan Illych Tolstoy brings us to one of the high points of 19th Century Literature. He explores with such uncompromising depth, issues of profound human…
Nineteenth Century Blogs Fourth and Final Topics: Week 10
Originally posted on Michael Griffith: Home Page- Literature and Life Summer 2023:
Please remember that you are permitted to create your own blog topics on subjects related to what we have been studying – if these topics don’t suit! Tolstoy: The Death of Ivan Illych & Master and?Man Tolstoy brings us to one of the high…
Blog 3 Topics for Nineteenth Century Literature- due due Friday 29th April: extended to Monday 1st May
Choose any ONE of the following topics: 1/How do the opening paragraphs of Matthew Arnold’s The Study of Poetry present a view that poetry could solve The Condition of England Question? 2/What makes Matthew Arnold’s poem “Dover Beach” such a personal response to the loss of belief in Victorian England? 3/Prepare a digital kit on…
Best Blogs First Round 1 “Show and Tell”- Shakespeare and the Renaissance 2022- ENGL210
Here are some of the amazing blogs and peer reviews produced by mid-semester: This is a feast of responses to the art that was around in Shakespeare’s time, to the impresssions gleaned from the Shakespeare Room at the Mitchell Library and the amazing Shakespeare statue which sits in Shakespeare Place, outside the MItchell, but now…
Show and Tell 19th Century Literature Mid-Semester Blogs… See the best here… THANK YOU ALL FOR YOUR AMAZING WORK…
Thanks you Ashleigh for telling us how reading the Romantics has actually changed the way you live your life right now: Best blog on our Art Gallery visit. Thank you Tia for discovering an epiphanic moment in front of Eugene Von Guerard’s Fig Tree: How entering the Art Gallery is like entering the gates of…
Shakespeare and the Renaissance: 2nd Blog Topics 2022
Choose one painting seen in the Renaissance selection studied at the gallery today. Describe the painting in details and say how this painting has expanded your understanding of the Age of Shakespeare. If you missed the visit you can still do this topic by focussing on one of the paintings on the document provided for…
Second Blog Topics for 19thC Literature 2022
Second Blogs Topics for ENGL200 Nineteenth Century Literature 1/ Chose any one of the paintings you examined at the gallery yesterday. Copy an image of the painting and include it in your blog. Then describe the painting in detail and say how this painting has amplified your understanding of an aspect of 19th Century Literature.…
Shakespeare and the Renaissance 2022
First Blog Topics. Try to stick close to the word length (i.e. 200 words + 50%). While you won’t be penalised for going over the limit you will only get marked on the permitted length. If possible illustrate your blogs (with images either your own or those available on Google), but be sure to identify…
First Blog Topics for 19th Century Literature 2022
Try to stick close to the word length (i.e. 200 words + 50%). While you won’t be penalised for going over the limit you will only get marked on the permitted length. If possible illustrate your blogs (with images either your own or those available on Google), but be sure to identify the source of…
Best Blogs out of Australian Literature (ENGL231) 2021
Best Blogs ENGL231 Thank you Anaïs Woods for your beautiful summary of the relevance of the indigenous content of this unit and of the power of blogging as a way of creating community: https://anaiswoods.wordpress.com/summative-entry/ Thank you Emily for your understanding of the way that literature can provide a means of deepening our understanding of what…
Final Blogs for Literature Through Time and Space
There have been some amazing blog entries produced since the middle of semester and some of your summative entries about how you have found studying under the impact of Covid are almost worth putting into an Anthology (might in fact happen!). But overall I was deeply moved by the way in which you contributed to…
Blog 4 ENGL231 – due 25 October
1/ Write a brief appraisal of Judith Beveridge’s visit to our class. What did you learn from her about poetry? Its practice and its purpose? 2/ Chose the first line of any one of Judith Beveridge’s poems and write your own poem on a related subject. 3/ Chose any one of Judith Beveridge’s poems and…
Australian Literature – Second Trawl through BLOGS 2021- Main topic – Students coping with Lockdown…
image courtesy of Francis Saad’s blog (see below) Best blog on the impact of lockdown is Anaïs Woods’ reflections on the appearance of the cherry blossom in spring: https://anaiswoods.wordpress.com/2021/09/01/just-look-up-week-6-blog/ Zahra Salami’s take on the dramas she has had to face during lockdown. Thank you for your open and honest writing Zahra: Sarah Vella’s powerful description…
Literature through Time and Space- Second Blog Trawl…
How students are coping with lockdown- this was a very popular topic and has produced some amazing creative work. Read on! You will also find below some wonderful poems and prose extracts inspired by the likes of Thomas Gray, Samuel Johnson, Aemelia Lanyer and others… Overall a wonderful creative response to the literature we have…
Blog Topics 3 for Australian Literature 2021
We have traversed quite some terrain in the last weeks. Chose one of these topics for your blog this week: 1/ Capture the seasonal quality of the Australia bush (in Spring) in a short poem that utilizes some of the techniques of Charles Harpur’s “A Midsummer Noon in the Australian Forest”. Maybe begin your poem…
Blog Topics 3 for Literature Through Time and Space
We have been travelling rapidly through both Time and Space. Chose any one of the following topics for your next blog: 1.Try to write a shaped poem like Herbert’s The Altar 2.Chose one of the women represented in the early 17th Century ( Aemilia Lanyer, Mary Wroth, Katherine Philips, Mary Cavendish), look at their biographical…
Best Blogs from 2021 Literature through Time and Space Group- First Run
Here is a cross section of some of the wonderfully creative responses to the literature we have been studying from the earliest Anglo-Saxon period (starting with Beowulf) through to the early 17th Century – so far! We are heading on through the Restoration and the 18th Century, into the 19th and on to our own…
Second Blog Topics for Literature Across Time and Space- Due Friday 3rd September
Lyre Bird ferreting for food in our back garden….. List of Topics for your second blog: Remember where possible to add illustrations to your blog and also make sure that you have enabled comments so that you can get some peer reviews. Write a first person account of what it is like studying Literature Across…
Second Blog 2 Topics for Australian Literature 2021 (Due Friday 3rd September)
List of Topics for your second blog: Write a first person account of what it is like studying Australian literature during a global pandemic. Give details of how the pandemic has impacted your work (positively and negatively) and how it has impacted the people who you live with. You can of course fictionalise your characters…
Australian Literature: First Crop of Outstanding Blogs Spring 2021
Read Loulay’s amazing experience of visiting her grandfather in Lebanon and how this memory was triggered by Lisa Bellear’s “Urbanised Reebocks Loulay- https://loulayslovelyliterature.wordpress.com/2021/08/13/my-grandfathers-imprisonment-by-the-frenchlanguage/ Read Anaïs’ passionate response to the racism of the taxi drive in Lisa Bellear’s taxi poem Anaïs Woods: https://anaiswoods.wordpress.com/2021/08/13/facing-the-denial-and-acts-of-racism-taxi-by-lisa-bellear-week-3-blog/ Read Chloe’s powerful entry on Romaine’s Genocide poem with a real understanding of…
Welcome to Blogging in Literature Across Time and Space (ENGL111) at ACU
Hi All, here are the topics for the First Blog of the Semester Chose any of the topics listed below, or create a topic of your own – as long as it is in some way connected to the themes of our unit so far. Remember you are permitted to include personal reflections alongside your…
Welcome to Blogging in Australian Literature 2021 (Unit ENGL231 at ACU)
Hi All, Chose any of the topics listed below, or create a topic of your own – as long as it is in some way connected to the themes of our unit so far. Remember you are permitted to include personal reflections alongside your literary reflections or creations. But you must try to write as…
The Bush around the top end of Sydney on August 8th 2021.
Grand Finalé for Nineteenth Century ePortfolios for 2021.
Best ePortfolio Summative Entries ENGL200 2021 Andrew Carloss Read Andrew’s fabulous reflection and powerfully illustrated piece on how we in this digital age need to take on board the insights of the Romantics and the Russians in order to survive as human beings! Read Emilee McNaught’s reflections on how her experience is mirrored in the…
My review of Jenny’s Blog
Here it is
Michael Griffith: Home Page- Literature and Life Summer 2023 