The generation of Murray is not my generation. The generation of Adamson is not my generation either, nor is it Tranter’s or Kinsella’s. My generation is a new generation in Australian poetry. In this era of the ‘contemporary’, particularly as a political proposition after the end of history, it is a dangerous endeavour to suggest there is a modernist / social realist debate. And while the actors have undoubtedly changed (as has the world and its labels) we can discern two such derivative realities in the newest generation of Australian poets. These poets are working in ‘deformed realism’ and ‘sentimental radicalism’.
I take as foundational in the modernist / social realist debate the division that emerged in World War Two Australia and was later embodied by Katharine Susannah Prichard and Dorothy Hewett in the field of poetry. Of course, one could look to Lukacs and Adorno for similar faultlines, or to Albert Tucker and Neil Counihan, but given my position on Noongar country it is important to see what sediment exists here in and of itself. This then is a genealogical and sociological position, not a search for roots or an importation of culturally sanctioned and accumulated references.
Both modernism and social realism are important unconscious aesthetic influences in today’s new generation of Australian poets. This is simply one way of organising these groups and is a poetics of critique and projection not an inalienable and incontestable truth. If one chose to, one could organise the whole in a different way; for example, somewhat predictably, by authorial identity. I would welcome that if only to see how allegiances shift and groups coalesce around different stories. But authorial identity is a red herring and poor analytical tool at the best of times. It ultimately displays a myopic liberalism in the reigning paradigm of identity politics that focuses on the life rather than the art, and fails to come to terms with the death of the author.
That modernism and social realism haunt Australian poetry, now, seems to me to be in their complicated historical positions, for they have dripped down, leaving not so much inheritors in a strict lineage but rather a spectral presence. This is no doubt due to the elasticity of their original definitions and the catholic breadth of today’s poets. Indeed, the following observation from Martin Duwell’s reference to the ’68 generation seems so outdated that it has no resonance now. He wrote:
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