The Wind at Your Door
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| Author | R. D. Fitzgerald |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Poetry |
| Publisher | Talkarra Press |
Publication date | 1959 |
| Publication place | Australia |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 15pp |
| Preceded by | Heemskerck Shoals |
| Followed by | Southmost Twelve |
The Wind at Your Door (1959) is a one-poem volume by Australian poet R. D. Fitzgerald. The poem was originally published in The Bulletin on 17 December 1958,[1] and later in a 275 copy Talkarra Press limited edition, signed by the author.[2]
The poem won the Grace Leven Prize for Poetry in 1959.[3]
The poem is based on the uprising of Irish rebel convicts at Castle Hill, New South Wales in 1804. It concerns two main characters, Martin Mason surgeon, and overseer of the brutal flogging of the poet's namesake, Morris Fitzgerral.
In her chapter on R. D. Fitzgerald in Preoccupations in Australian Poetry, Judith Wright noted that the poem dealt with the moral problem of "the conflict between the claims of heartless authority and of its victims; a conflict that was introduced to Australian soil with the First Fleet."[4]
The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature noted that "...Fitzgerald sees the continuing problem, on both the both national and the individual level, of the Australian identity. On the general level is the problem of the nation adapting to its development from a 'jail-yard'; on the personal level is the problem of individual Australians (in this case the poet himself) adapting to both sides of their ancestry, authoritarianism and rebellion against authority."[5]
In his commentary on the poem in 60 Classic Australian Poems Geoff Page noted "As the definitive poem about Australia's convict past, R.D. Fitzgerald's "The Wind at Your Door" is going to be around for as long as we are willing to recognise that part of our history. Indeed, it remains a powerful instrument against our forgetting it."[6]
Notes
The convict Morris Fitzgerral also appears in Thomas Keneally's novel Passenger (1979).[5]