Birds. Judith Wright. National Library of Australia.
Reviewed by Michael Byrne
Judith Wright was born in Armidale, NSW, in 1915. She died in Canberra in 2000. As well as a poet she was also known as a critic, anthologist, short-story writer, historian, conservationist and activist. She worked on her family property during World War Two, and as a secretary subsequently at the University of Queensland. Her first book of poems, Moving Image, was published in 1942. In 1962, Birds was first published. An expanded edition of Birds, with supplementary poems and illustrations, was published in 2003. Most of the poems in Birds were written in the 1950s when she lived on Tambourine Mountain in Queensland. Wright’s daughter Meredith McKinney says in the introduction to Birds that the poems were written during a period of happiness. She also acknowledges that birds (like humans) go though cruelty, pain and death. Wright displays an environmental conscience in the poems in Birds (‘Extinct Birds’):
Charles Harpur in his journals long ago
(written in hope and love, and never printed)
recorded the birds of his time’s forest –
birds long vanished with the fallen forest –
described in copperplate on unread pages.
The scarlet satin-bird, swung like a lamp in berries,
he watched in love, and then in hope described it.
There was a bird, blue, small, spangled like dew.
All now are vanished with the fallen forest.
And he, unloved, past hope, was buried . . .
This poem is admirably humane, for both Harpur and the birds. While Wright focuses briefly on the scarlet satin-bird in ‘Extinct Birds’, another bird gets her attention in another poem (‘Egrets’):
Once as I travelled through a quiet evening,
I saw a pool, jet-black and mirror-still.
Beyond, the slender paperbacks stood crowding;
each on its own white image looked its fill,
and nothing moved but thirty egrets wading –
thirty egrets in a quiet evening.
Once in a lifetime, lovely past believing,
your lucky eyes may light on such a pool.
As though for many years I had been waiting,
I watched in silence, till my heart was full
of clear dark water, and white trees unmoving,
and, whiter yet, those thirty egrets wading.
The reader experiences the joy of this pleasant memory. It is also a poem about good fortune. Wright kindly shares this life affirmation. In Birds, Wright shares with the reader her passion for birds (‘Birds’):
If I could leave their battleground for the forest of a bird
I could melt the past, the present and the future in one
and find the words that lie behind all these languages.
Then I could fuse my passions into one clear stone
and be simple to myself as the bird is to the bird.
Wright’s enthusiasm for birds is infectious. She writes about exotic birds and common ones (‘Magpies’):
Along the road the magpies walk
with hands in pockets, left and right.
They tilt their heads, and stroll and talk.
In their well-fitted black and white
they look like certain gentlemen
who seem most nonchalant and wise
until their meal is served – and then
what clashing beaks, what greedy eyes!
But not one man that I have heard
throws back his head in such as a song
of grace and praise – no man nor bird.
Their greed is brief; their joy is long.
For each is born with such a throat
as thanks his God with every note.
This poem is technically good. There is something happening in every line. None of the poem seems forced or cumbersome. Wright’s technical competence extends to last lines (‘Pelicans’):
. . . Pelicans rock together,
solemn as clowns in white on a circus river,
meaning: this world holds every sort of weather.
This last line is memorable and quotable. The full book, with its poems and illustrations, is pretty. The National Library of Australia did a great job in publishing this book. It is part of Wright’s continuing legacy. Birds is a book of poetry that will have continuing relevance to all generations.
Michael Byrne 