Collected Poems

Almost a decade ago, Judith Wright gave up writing poetry, concentrating her attention on "questions of what's called 'conservation', and human, especially Aboriginal, rights". Those preoccupations are not new: they have been at the heart to her poetry from the beginning in "The Moving Image" (1946) through to "Phantom Dwelling" (1985). She has also explored other themes: the relations of man and woman, of people and their landscape, of a given language in an alien place - themes that are political, but have a metaphysical dimension, a timeless pertinence. This "Collected Poems" celebrates the poetry of one of the great English language poets of our time, whose poetic purpose has remained firm and increasingly distinctive in an era of uncertainty and compromise. Wright was the winner of the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 1992.