Eroded Hills
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| "Eroded Hills" | |
|---|---|
| by Judith Wright | |
| Written | 1951 |
| First published in | The Bulletin |
| Country | Australia |
| Language | English |
| Publication date | 19 September 1951 |
| Lines | 12 |
"Eroded Hills" (1951) is a poem by Australian poet Judith Wright, also known under the title "Inheritor".[1]
It was originally published in The Bulletin on 19 September 1951,[2] and was subsequently reprinted in the author's single-author collections and a number of Australian poetry anthologies.[1]
The poet stands and contemplates the bare hills of her country, "these hills that my father's father stripped", and she sees them "naked and whipped humbled/abandoned, out of mind". She longs for a time when they bore trees and fruit, and feels a level of guilt about her association with their desecration.
Critical reception
In his wide-ranging essay concerning myths in Australian poetry in Southerly magazine, Martin Harrison noted that if he were "searching for a key genitive figure in 20th Century Australian poetry, then it would be the figure traced in this and similar poems." He went on to comment "this is a poem which has a conductive and productive relationship with the issues of its time: the poem is what makes them significant. It makes them significant through the figure of an internalisation — a dream."[3]