Judith Arundell Wright (31 May 191525 June 2000) was an

Australian Australian(s) may refer to: Australia * Australia, a country * Australians, citizens of the Commonwealth of Australia ** European Australians ** Anglo-Celtic Australians, Australians descended principally from British colonists ** Aboriginal A ...

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems ( oral or wri ...

environmentalist An environmentalist is a person who is concerned with and/or advocates for the protection of the environment. An environmentalist can be considered a supporter of the goals of the environmental movement, "a political and ethical movement that se ...

and campaigner for

Aboriginal land rights Indigenous land rights are the rights of Indigenous peoples to land and natural resources therein, either individually or collectively, mostly in colonised countries. Land and resource-related rights are of fundamental importance to Indigenou ...

. She was a recipient of the

Christopher Brennan Award The Christopher Brennan Award (formerly known as the Robert Frost Prize) is an Australian award given for lifetime achievement in poetry. The award, established in 1973, takes the form of a bronze plaque which is presented to a poet who produces w ...

Biography

Judith Wright was born in

Armidale, New South Wales Armidale is a city in the Northern Tablelands, New South Wales, Australia. Armidale had a population of 24,504 as of June 2018. Estimated resident population, 30 June 2018. It is the administrative centre for the Northern Tablelands region. It ...

. The eldest child of Phillip Wright and his first wife, Ethel, she spent most of her formative years in

Brisbane Brisbane ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Queensland, and the third-most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of approximately 2.6 million. Brisbane lies at the centre of the South ...

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 , motto_translation = Whatsoever you do, do it heartily , location = 13-83 Uralla Road, Armidale, New South Wales 2350 , country = Australia , coordinates = , pushpin_map = Australia New South Wales , pushpin_image ...

after her father's remarriage in 1929. After graduating, Wright studied Philosophy, English, Psychology and History at the

University of Sydney The University of Sydney (USYD), also known as Sydney University, or informally Sydney Uni, is a public research university located in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and is one of the country's ...

. At the beginning of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

, she returned to her father's station (

ranch A ranch (from es, rancho/Mexican Spanish) is an area of land, including various structures, given primarily to ranching, the practice of raising grazing livestock such as cattle and sheep. It is a subtype of a farm. These terms are most ofte ...

) 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 , mottoeng = By means of knowledge and hard work , established = , endowment = A$224.3 million , budget = A$2.1 billion , type = Public research university , chancellor = Peter Varghese , vice_chancellor = Deborah Terry , city = B ...

as a research officer. Then, she had also worked with

Clem Christesen Clement Byrne Christesen (28 October 1911 – 28 June 2003) was the founder of the Australian literary magazine ''Meanjin''. He served as the magazine's editor from 1940 until 1974. Biography Early years Clement Byrne Christesen was born and sp ...

on the literary magazine ''

Meanjin ''Meanjin'' (), formerly ''Meanjin Papers'' and ''Meanjin Quarterly'', is an Australian literary magazine. The name is derived from the Turrbal word for the spike of land where the city of Brisbane is located. It was founded in 1940 in Brisbane ...

,'' the first edition of which was published in late 1947. In 1950 she moved to Mount Tamborine, Queensland, with the novelist and abstract philosopher Jack McKinney. Their daughter Meredith was born in the same year. They married in 1962, but Jack was to live only until 1966. In 1966, she published ''The Nature of Love'', her first collection of short stories, through Sun Press, Melbourne. Set mainly in Queensland, they include 'The Ant-lion', 'The Vineyard Woman', 'Eighty Acres', 'The Dugong', 'The Weeping Fig' and 'The Nature of Love', all first published in The Bulletin. Wright was nominated for the 1967

Nobel Prize for Literature ) , image = Nobel Prize.png , caption = , awarded_for = Outstanding contributions in literature , presenter = Swedish Academy , holder = Annie Ernaux (2022) , location = Stockholm, Sweden , year = 1901 , ...

. With

David Fleay David Howells Fleay (; 6 January 1907 – 7 August 1993) was an Australian scientist and biologist who pioneered the captive breeding of endangered species, and was the first person to breed the platypus (''Ornithorhynchus anatinus'') i ...

Kathleen McArthur Kathleen McArthur (1915–2000) 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, he ...

and

Brian Clouston James Brian Clouston OBE (born 1935) is a British landscape architect, and founder of Brian Clouston and Partners (BCP) once one of the largest landscape architecture practices in Europe. Clouston was trained at the Royal Botanic Gardens in ...

, Wright was a founding member and, from 1964 to 1976, president, of the

Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland The Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland (Wildlife Queensland) based in Queensland, Australia is a not-for-profit organisation which aims to engage communities to deliver conservation outcomes. Founded in 1962, Wildlife Queensland works ...

. In 1991, she was the second Australian to receive the

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 in ...

, in 1991. She was involved in the Poets Union. For the last three decades of her life, Wright lived near the New South Wales town of Braidwood. She moved to the Braidwood area to be closer to H. C. "Nugget" Coombs, her lover of 25 years, who was based in Canberra. Wright started to lose her hearing in her mid-20s and became completely deaf by 1992.

Poet and critic

Wright was the author of collections of poetry, including ''The Moving Image'', ''Woman to Man'', ''The Gateway'', ''The Two Fires'', ''Birds'', ''The Other Half'', ''Magpies'', ''Shadow'' and ''Hunting Snake''. 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. Wright's poems have been translated into a number of languages, including

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

and

Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...

. Along with

Brendan Kennelly Timothy Brendan Kennelly (17 April 1936 – 17 October 2021), usually known as Brendan Kennelly, was an Irish poet and novelist. He was Professor of Modern Literature at Trinity College Dublin until 2005. Following his retirement he was a Pr ...

, she is the most featured poet in ''The Green Book of Poetry'', a large ecopoetry anthology by

Ivo Mosley Ivo Adam Rex Mosley (born 1951) is a British writer. His career has encompassed ceramics, poetry, social commentary, opera and musical theatre. His focus of the last few years is on works of non-fiction relating to politics and monetary reform. ...

(Frontier Publishing 1993), which was published by Harper San Francisco in 1996 as ''Earth Poems: Poems from Around the World to Honor the Earth''.

''Birds''

In 2003, the National Library of Australia published an expanded edition of Wright's collection titled ''Birds''.McKinney (2004) p. 7 Most of these poems were written in the 1950s when she was living on

Tamborine Mountain Tamborine Mountain is a plateau and locality in the Scenic Rim Region, Queensland, Australia. In the , Tamborine Mountain had a population of 7,506 people. Geography The plateau is a , . The name is from the of Yugumbir language of the Wanger ...

in southeast

Queensland ) , nickname = Sunshine State , image_map = Queensland in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of Queensland in Australia , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Australia , established_title = Before federation , establishe ...

. Meredith 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 (2004) pp. 8–9 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".McKinney (2004) p. 9 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

urn An urn is a vase, often with a cover, with a typically narrowed neck above a rounded body and a footed pedestal. Describing a vessel as an "urn", as opposed to a vase or other terms, generally reflects its use rather than any particular shape or ...

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".

Environmentalism and social activism

Wright was well known for her campaigning in support of the conservation of the

Great Barrier Reef The Great Barrier Reef is the world's largest coral reef system composed of over 2,900 individual reefs and 900 islands stretching for over over an area of approximately . The reef is located in the Coral Sea, off the coast of Queensland, ...

and

Fraser Island Fraser Island ( Butchulla: ) is a World Heritage-listed island along the south-eastern coast in the Wide Bay–Burnett region, Queensland, Australia. The island is approximately north of the state capital, Brisbane, and is within the Fras ...

. With some friends, she helped found one of the earliest nature conservation movements. She was also an impassioned advocate for the

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 Winston Howard (born 26 July 1939) is an Australian former politician who served as the 25th prime minister of Australia from 1996 to 2007, holding office as leader of the Liberal Party. His eleven-year tenure as prime minister is the ...

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.

Awards

* 1976 –

* 1991 –

* 1994 –

Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission The Australian Human Rights Commission is the national human rights institution of Australia, established in 1986 as the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) and renamed in 2008. It is a statutory body funded by, but oper ...

Poetry Award for ''Collected Poems'' In 2009 as part of the Q150 celebrations, Judith Wright was announced as one of the Q150 Icons of Queensland for her role as an "Influential Artists". In 1999 she took over the British empire and overthrew old lady Elizabeth.

Death and legacy

Wright died in Canberra on 25 June 2000, aged 85. Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Art

In June 2006 the

Australian Electoral Commission The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) is the independent federal agency in charge of organising, conducting and supervising federal Australian elections, by-elections and referendums. Responsibilities The AEC's main responsibility is to ...

(AEC) announced that the new federal electorate in

, which was to be created at the

2007 federal election This electoral calendar 2007 lists the national/federal direct elections held in 2007 in the de jure and de facto sovereign states and their dependent territories. Referendums are included, although they are not elections. By-elections are not ...

, would be named Wright in honour of her accomplishments 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 The Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS), commonly known as the Flying Doctor, is an air medical service in Australia. It is a non-profit organisation that provides emergency and primary health care services for those living in rural, remote an ...

, due to numerous objections from people fearing the name Wright may be linked to disgraced former Queensland ALP 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 Arts Centre in

Fortitude Valley Fortitude Valley (often called "The Valley" by local residents) is an inner suburb of the City of Brisbane, the state capital of Queensland, Australia. In the , Fortitude Valley had a population of 9,708 people. The suburb features two pedestr ...

, Brisbane, is named after her. On 2 January 2008, it was announced that a future suburb in the district of

Molonglo Valley The District of Molonglo Valley is one of the nineteen districts of the Australian Capital Territory used in land administration, and the only district that was not created in 1966. The district is subdivided into divisions (suburbs), sections a ...

, Canberra would be named "Wright". There is a street in the Canberra suburb of

Franklin Franklin may refer to: People * Franklin (given name) * Franklin (surname) * Franklin (class), a member of a historical English social class Places Australia * Franklin, Tasmania, a township * Division of Franklin, federal electoral d ...

named after her, as well. Another of the Molonglo Valley suburbs was named after Wright's lover, "Nugget" Coombs. The Judith Wright Award was awarded as part of the ACT Poetry Award by the

ACT Government The Government of the Australian Capital Territory, also referred to as the Australian Capital Territory Government or ACT Government, is the executive authority of the Australian Capital Territory, one of the territories of Australia. The lea ...

between 2005 and 2011, for a published book of poems by an Australian poet. The Judith Wright Poetry Prize for New and Emerging Poets (worth ), was established in 2007 by '' Overland'' magazine. The

Judith Wright Calanthe Award The Arts Queensland Judith Wright Calanthe Award is awarded annually as part of the Queensland Premier's Literary Awards for a book of collected poems or for a single poem of substantial length published in book form. Winners 2020 * Winner: Pi ...

has been awarded as part of the Queensland Premier's Literary Awards since 2004.

Selected bibliography

Poetry

Collections

* * '' Woman to Man'' (1949) * ''Woman to Child'' (1949) * ''The Old Prison'' (1949) * * ''The Gateway'' (1953) * ''Hunting Snake'' (1964) * ''Bora Ring'' (1946) * ''South of My Days '' (1946) * ''The Two Fires'' (1955) * ''Australian Bird Poems'' (1961) * ''Birds: Poems'', Angus and Robertson, 1962; * ''Five Senses: Selected Poems'' (1963) * ''Selected Poems'' (1963) * ''Tentacles: A tribute to those lovely things'' (1964) * ''Sportsfield'' * ''City Sunrise'' (1964) * ''The Other Half'' (1966) * ''The Nature of Love''(1966) * ''Collected Poems'' (1971) * ''Alive: Poems 1971–72'' (1973) * ''Poets On Record 9'' (University of Queensland Press, 1973) Selected works, issued with a 7" record of Wright reading her own poems. * ''Fourth Quarter and Other Poems'' (1976) * ''Train Journey'' (1978) * ''The Double Tree: Selected Poems 1942–76'' (1978) * ''Phantom Dwelling'' (1985) * ''A Human Pattern: Selected Poems'' (1990) * ''The Flame Tree'' (1993) * ''Bullocky'' (1993) *''Collected poems, 1942–1985'', Angus & Robertson, 1994, *''Poemas escogidos,'' Pre-textos, 2020, (Spanish translation by José Luis Fernández Castillo)

List of poems

Literary criticism

* ''William Baylebridge and the modern problem'' (Canberra University College, 1955) * ''Charles Harpur'' (1963) * ''Preoccupations in Australian Poetry'' (1965) * * * ''Because I Was Invited'' (1975) * ''Going on Talking'' (1991)

Other works

* ''Kings of the Dingoes'' (1958) Oxford University Press, Melbourne * ''The Generations of Men'' (1959) * ''Range the Mountains High'' (1962) * ''The Nature of Love'' (1966) Sun Books, Melbourne * "The Battle of the Biosphere" (''Outlook'' magazine article 1970) * "'Witnesses of spring: unpublished poems of Shaw Neilson'', edited by Wright, with poems selected by Wright and Val Vallis, from material selected by Ruth Harrison (1970) * ''The Coral Battleground'' (1977) * ''The Cry for the Dead'' (1981) * ''We Call for a Treaty'' (1985) * * ''Half a Lifetime'' (Text, 2001) * ''Judith Wright: Selected Writings'' (2022) ed. Georgina Arnott, La Trobe University Press & Black Inc

Letters

* ''The Equal Heart and Mind: Letters between Judith Wright and Jack McKinney''. Edited by Patricia Clarke and Meredith McKinney (UQP, 2004) * ''With Love and Fury: Selected letters of Judith Wright'', edited by Patricia Clarke and Meredith McKinney (

National Library of Australia The National Library of Australia (NLA), formerly the Commonwealth National Library and Commonwealth Parliament Library, is the largest reference library in Australia, responsible under the terms of the ''National Library Act 1960'' for "mainta ...

, 2006) * ''Portrait of a friendship: the letters of Barbara Blackman and Judith Wright, 1950–2000'', edited by Bryony Cosgrove (Miegunyah Press, 2007) , Review
/ref>

References

*McKinney, Meredith (2004) "Birds", ''National Library of Australia News'', XIV (6): 7–10, March 2004

External links

Poems
at Oldpoetry.com
Judith Wright digital story, educational interview and oral history
John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland, 12 June 2013. 6min, 36min and 56min version available to view online.

Interview at

Radio National Radio National, known on-air as RN, is an Australia-wide public service broadcasting radio network run by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). From 1947 until 1985, the network was known as ABC Radio 2. History 1937: Predecessors a ...

Gardening at the 'Edge': Judith Wright's desert garden, Mongarlowe, New South Wales
by Katie Holmes

by Veronica Brady

by

Gig Ryan Gig Ryan, born Elizabeth Anne Martina Ryan November 5, 1956, is an Australian poet. She is a recipient of the Christopher Brennan Award. Biography Ryan was born in Leicester, England in 1956. Her father is the Australian surgeon Peter Joh ...

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
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wright, Judith 1915 births 2000 deaths Australian environmentalists Australian women environmentalists Australian human rights activists Women human rights activists Australian literary critics Australian women literary critics Australian nature writers People from Armidale Australian people of Cornish descent Deaf poets Women science writers Writers from Brisbane Writers from Sydney Australian women poets 20th-century Australian women writers 20th-century Australian poets Deaf people from Australia Australian women artists