Freedom on the Wallaby : Poems of the Australian People

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LanguageEnglish
GenrePoetry anthology
PublisherPinchgut Press
Freedom on the Wallaby : Poems of the Australian People
AuthorMarjorie Pizer
LanguageEnglish
GenrePoetry anthology
PublisherPinchgut Press
Publication date
1953
Publication placeAustralia
Media typePrint
Pages208 pp.

Freedom on the Wallaby : Poems of the Australian People is an anthology of poetry edited by Marjorie Pizer, published by Pinchgut Press in Australia in 1953.[1]

The collection contains 174 poems from a variety of sources.[2]

In her introduction to the anthology editor Pizer explained why she chose the works for the book:

Freedom on the Wallaby is not just another new collection, varying only slightly here and there from the established pattern of Australian anthologies. Its purpose is not merely to display the poetry written in Australia, but to give adequate representation (for the first time, we believe) to the poetry of the Australian realist and democratic tradition, our 'basic literary tradition' and the principal and most distinctive influence on our literature. Written for the delight of the common reader, this is the poetry that is profoundly concerned with the everyday life and problems of the common man.

Contents

Critical reception

A reviewer in The Tribune (Sydney) was enthusiastic about the anthology: "To read the poems that Marjorie Pizer has discovered or collected is an invigorating experience. It is literally to discover one's own country again — to see its real meaning."[3]

In The West Australian also welcomed the book: "Freedom on the Wallaby is an anthology that relates Australian poetry to Australian development as a whole. The editor, Marjorie Pizer, has selected verse that belongs to particular phases in Australia's history: the gold rushes, the slumps, the booms, the workers' struggles...The result is a swift, but vivid, Cook's tour through the Australian past, a quick succession of bright word pictures of scenes long forgotten."[4]

Notes

See also

References

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