Here are the slides and the recording for this week’s lecture. The recording is a little frustrating to listen to because you will only be able to hear my side of the conversation. From next week I will be posting up the video version of our sessions (with student permission) and you will then be…
Tag: Judith Wright
Australian Literature Mid-Winter Spring 2019- Week 1: The Mountain has its own Meaning.
In Australian Literature today we explored the themes that arise from the line from Judith Wright’s poem “Rockface” in which she declares “the remnant of a mountain has its own meaning”. This image from Russel Drysdale’s Desert Landscape captures similar resonances to Judith Wright’s poem: https://m.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/OA15.1959/ Drysdale, like Judith Wright seems to honour the dignity of…
Clemente Mount Druit- Week 2
We had a wonderful morning in which we explored the magic of Judith Wright’s poetry, especially in her poem “A Wattle Tree”. So many good responses to this poem from the class showed that Judith Wright really does have a way of making us see the landscape in a totally new, transformed, way. And the rhyme…
Clemente OZ Lit 2019 Mount Druitt
Hello All, it was really good to start to get to know all of you yesterday: Vivian, Honeylene, Malia, Laura, Jeff, Suzanne, Heather, Jenny, Claire, Rita, Joseph, Julie, Geoffrey…. Peter…. I hope I have not left anyone out! We got off to a good start with our discussions on some poems by Indigenous poets who…
Class given to African American Clemente Students In the Centre of Harlem
What a gift this was to be to share my insights on and understanding of Australian Indigenous literature with this passionate, switched-on group of Harlem Clemente students. They were so keen to hear and know about their less well -off brothers and sisters down-under. I shared with them the way that our university supports Indigenous…
Week 1: The Mountain Has Its Own Meaning
Today we explored the meaning of this wonderfully suggestive line from Judith Wright’s poem “Rockface”. Judith Wright’s line picks up a core theme in Australian Literature from the earliest days of colonization through to our own times: what is our attitude to the Australian landscape? Is it utilitarian and appropriative? Or is it open to…
Reading Australia: Best Summative Blog Posts for 2017
There have been some truly fabulous Summative Blog Posts from the group of students who have just finished the third year unit Reading Australia. Such wonderful reflections that bring into focus students’ ethnicity, their appreciation of what Australian culture has to offer, but also their deep sadness at the continuing injustices, especially to indigenous people.…
Exploring Literature Week 1
Welcome to all our Clemente students at Mission Australia in Surry Hills. We had a wonderful first class looking at poetry by Margaret Atwood (“You Fit Into Me”), Richard Tipping (“Mangoes”) and Judith Wright (“The Wattle Tree”). It was wonderful to see how quickly this group found ways of discussing both the beauty of the…
Reading Australia: Judith Wright
Thank you all for your searching and serious responses to all the questions posed by Judith Wright’s poetry. I really sense that her poems in their creative beauty and their imaginative power have attracted many of you. We have had such good and fruitful discussions over the last two weeks. It is almost a pity…
Great Start to Semester One
Hi All, I am not sure whether to call this autumn or summer semester! We are having the best summer for a long time and we are well into Autumn! Global warming??? At all events we have had a fabulous start to the semester in all literature units. The one blog topic for this week…
Oz Lit in the Twentieth Century
Patrick White was the focus of much of today’s lecture. His essay “The Prodigal Son” (1958) gives a wonderful account of why White came back to Australia after nearly 20 years in Europe. He describes his response to a materialistic, spiritually dead culture and yet sets out his determination to make a difference to this…
Early Twentieth Century Writers in Australia
We will be looking at some of these authors more closely next week, so to whet your appetites why not try one or two of these blog topics. REMEMBER ALSO YOU MUST COMPLETE AT LEAST ONE PEER REVIEW EACH WEEK. THESE WILL COUNT TOWARDS YOUR FINAL ASSESSMENT. BE BRAVE, BOLD AND ADVENTUROUS: TELL YOUR PEER…
Literature and Life at Mission Australia Surry Hills- Week 3
Dawn over Kuring-gai Chase- North of Sydney 5 new students last night! That was fabulous and we had some really great discussions on what poetic language can do through its use of sound patterning, its use of connotations (rather than denotations) and its use of imagery (visual, tactile, kinetic etc)… And we had a wonderful…
Clemente Mission Australia Week 2 Continued
The Clemente Program being run from Australian Catholic University in close partnership with range of Welfare Organizations such as Mission Australia, was started some years ago by an American, Earl Shorris. Shorris had a vision that poverty stricken Americans needed a way in which they could reclaim their dignity, their creative spirit, their intelligence. He wrote a…
Michael Griffith: Home Page- Literature and Life Summer 2023 
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