(1915-2000) poet
Judith Wright was born to Philip Arundel Wright and Ethel Wright in Thalgarrah Station in Australia. Wright’s mother died in 1927, and a governess educated Wright. From 1929 to 1933, she attended the New England Girls’ School in Armi-dale. She started writing poems when she was very young, and her first poems appeared in 1933. In 1934, she attended the University of Sydney.
Many of Wright’s poems appeared in leading journals including the Sydney Morning Herald, Bulletin, and Meanjin Papers. Significant themes of her poetry include relationships with nature, Australian culture, Aboriginal culture, human rights, and reverence for life. The Moving Image (1946), her first collection of poems written during World War II, considers death and evil.
Wright writes in lyric form, as in Woman to Man (1949), which compares poetic imagination to the love between a man and woman: “Then all worlds I made in me: / all the world you hear and see.” The Two Fires contains poems on the threat to humanity by humanity itself by means of nuclear weapons. There is also an emphasis on the exploration of language and the importance of myth. Her poetry is influenced by T. S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, and W. B. Yeats, as can be seen in the wasteland images and prosaic language of Phantom Dwelling (1985).
Wright is renowned as poet, short-story writer, environmentalist, and children’s writer. Going-on Talking: Tales of a Great Aunt (1998), her last book, was for children. She has received several honors: In 1949 she won the Grace Leven Prize for Poetry; she was elected to the Australian Literature Council; she won the Robert Frost Memorial award in 1976; she won the World Prize for Poetry in 1984; and, her greatest honor, she received the Queen’s gold medal for poetry. Wright has published more than 56 volumes of poetry and short stories. She is acclaimed as one of Australia’s greatest writers.
Another Work by Judith Wright
Collected Poems, 1942-1985. Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1994.
Works about Judith Wright
Strauss, J. Judith Wright. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Walker, S. P. Flame and Shadow: A Study of Judith Wright’s Poetry. St. Lucia, B.W.I.: University of Queensland Press, 1991.
