__NOTOC__
"Homecoming" is a 1968 poem by
Bruce Dawe
Donald Bruce Dawe (15 February 1930 – 1 April 2020) was an Australian poet and academic. Some critics consider him one of the most influential Australian poets of all time. . Written as an
elegy
An elegy is a poem of serious reflection, and in English literature usually a lament for the dead. However, according to ''The Oxford Handbook of the Elegy'', "for all of its pervasiveness ... the 'elegy' remains remarkably ill defined: sometime ...
for anonymous soldiers, "Homecoming" is an anti-war poem protesting Australia's involvement in the
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...
during the 1960s.
Dennis Haskell, Winthrop Professor of English and Cultural Studies at
University of Western Australia
The University of Western Australia (UWA) is a public research university in the Australian state of Western Australia. The university's main campus is in Perth, the state capital, with a secondary campus in Albany, Western Australia, Albany an ...
, has called it "the most highly regarded poem about Vietnam written by any Australian", and Peter Pierce, the editor of ''The Cambridge History of Australian Literature'' has described it as "one of the finest
threnodies in the war literature of Vietnam".
The anti-war sentiment in "Homecoming" is more direct than in Dawe's other well-known war poem, "
Weapons Training Weapons training may refer to:
* Firearm-related education
** Firearm history
** Firearm types
** Range shooting
**Sport shooting
** Gun safety
* Martial arts
** Kata
* Military exercises
**Recruit training
Military recruit training, commonly kn ...
", written two years later. The ironic use of the word ''
homecoming
Homecoming is the tradition of welcoming back alumni or other former members of an organization to celebrate the organization's existence. It is a tradition in many high schools, colleges, and churches in the United States, Canada and Liberia.
...
'', with its usual connotations of celebration, as the title becomes apparent on reading the poem, in which the acts of collecting and processing the bodies of the war dead and shipping them home are described in a highly repetitive fashion, with a rhythm that evokes the beat of a funeral drum. Although the poem was written in 1968, the year Dawe left the
Royal Australian Air Force
"Through Adversity to the Stars"
, colours =
, colours_label =
, march =
, mascot =
, anniversaries = RAAF Anniversary Commemoration ...
, it had its origins, according to Dawe's biographer Peter Kuch, in Dawe's earlier "political awakening in Melbourne in the mid-1950s" and in particular his personal reaction to
the fall of Dien Bien Phu in 1954.
[Kuch (1995) p. 59] Before joining the RAAF, Dawe had worked as a postman.
John Kinsella has proposed that Dawe's experiences during that time are echoed in the final lines of "Homecoming":
"Homecoming" is included in the 1971 collection of Dawe's poetry ''Condolences of the Season'' and in his ''Sometimes Gladness: Collected Poems, 1954–1992''. It also appears in several anthologies of Australian literature, including ''Two Centuries of Australian Poetry'' (
Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...
, 1988) and ''The Macmillan Anthology of Australian Literature'' (
Macmillan
MacMillan, Macmillan, McMillen or McMillan may refer to:
People
* McMillan (surname)
* Clan MacMillan, a Highland Scottish clan
* Harold Macmillan, British statesman and politician
* James MacMillan, Scottish composer
* William Duncan MacMillan ...
, 1990).
Notes and references
Sources
*Astley, Thea (1979). ''Three Australian Writers: Essays on Bruce Dawe, Barbara Baynton, and Patrick White''. Townsville Foundation for Australian Literary Studies
*Haskell, Dennis (2002)
''Attuned to Alien Moonlight: The Poetry of Bruce Dawe'' Univ. of Queensland Press.
*Kinsella, John (2008)
''Contrary Rhetoric: Lectures on Landscape and Language'' Fremantle Press.
*Kuch, Peter (1995)
''Bruce Dawe''Oxford University Press.
*Pierce, Peter (2002)
"Australian and American literature of the Vietnam War"in ''Australia's Vietnam War'', pp. 110–135. Texas A&M University Press.
*Wheeler, David (2011)
"Two Australian poems: 'Trains' by Judith Wright and 'Homecoming' by Bruce Dawe'"in ''The Imperial Nightmare: Studies in English Literature'', pp. 123–124. GRIN Verlag.
Further reading
*Headon, David (1978)
"The Quick and the Dead: The Breadth of Australia's Poetry in the Last Decade" ''Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature'', Vol. 32, No. 2 (Spring, 1978), pp. 93–119
External links
Complete text of "Homecoming"published in Flanagan, Martin (16 May 1989). "Voice of people's poet in touch with the real world". ''
The Age
''The Age'' is a daily newspaper in Melbourne, Australia, that has been published since 1854. Owned and published by Nine Entertainment, ''The Age'' primarily serves Victoria (Australia), Victoria, but copies also sell in Tasmania, the Austral ...
''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Homecoming (Poem)
Australian poems
Vietnam War poems
Anti-war works
Laments