Off the Map By David Malouf

David Malouf is an Australian writer who has had a long and successful career. He has published many books and collections of poetry and has also received several awards for his works. One recurring theme in Malouf’s work seems to be soul- searching and finding your place in society. Malouf’s poem, ‘Off the map’, is a poem that explores the imaginative landscape of the protagonists mind. The poem also includes a lot of war imagery that the person is trying to escape from. This creates the protagonists inner landscape.

In the second stanza of ‘Off the Map’, the person seems to identify his surroundings as a type of war zone. ‘Bronze Anzacs’ and ‘at ease between wars’ are lines from the poem that support this. Change in the landscape is seen as the poem continues and the imaginary landscape of the person is explored in more depth. The use of imagery in the poem conveys a change in the journey of the protagonists mind. This is evident from lines such as ‘out into a dream’ and ‘black piers, bright water, silos moonstruck’. It is also evident from these lines that the protagonist does not always feel comfortable in the physical landscape so he explores his mind and imagination. The use of the simile, ‘pointing nowhere, like saint s practicing stillness in a ripple of grain’ suggests that the persona is so lost in his imaginative and inner landscape that he has almost lost touch with the his physical surroundings.

The connotations of war time and battle at the beginning of the poem reinforce the idea that the protagonist is uncomfortable with his physical surroundings. This alludes to the fact that the persona may want to escape the physical landscape and create his own surroundings in his imagination. This reveals more to the responder about the persona and his inner landscape.

More war time imagery is used as the poem progresses with the simile, ‘they thunder across country like the daredevil boys’. This has connotations of brave soldiers running across the land. In the next few stanzas the mood of the poem seems to change as the physical surroundings change from night to day. This is evident from the use of the line, ‘they climb towards dawn’. From this point onwards in the poem, the landscape that is in the poem is neither the persona’s inner or imaginative but their physical surroundings. This suggests that the persona’s imaginative landscape is most active at night and once day breaks the physical surrounding become more real and harsh that he struggles to escape to his imaginative landscape. The final lines of the poem read, ‘nameless, no to be found by any day on any map’. This line connects back to the title of the poem, ‘Off the Map’, as it has connotations of freedom and travel. The persona may feel that he is truly free because he has a whole other world within his inner and imaginative landscape that is active only at night. The line suggests while places in the physical landscape can be found on a map, the landscape of his mind cannot. The protagonist truly lives ‘off the map’.

Malouf’s ‘Off the Map’ differs to Mackellar’s ‘My Country’ as ‘Off the Map’ depicts the persona as being slightly uncomfortable in their physical surroundings and so their enter their minds and create their own world out of their imagination. Whereas, in ‘My Country’ the protagonist is shown as being extremely comfortable with the physical landscape and it is often depicted in the poem that there is no place that persona would rather be.

My annotated version of ‘Off the Map’

Holy Thursday By William Blake

William Blake was an English poet, painter and printmaker. Although relatively unrecognised during his lifetime, he is now considered to be one of the most influential figures in the history of poetry.  Most of his work seems to embody the body of God or the human existence itself. ‘Holy Thursday’, one of his many works of poetry, is about the religious ceremony of Holy Thursday; however the poem seems to focus more on the social and economic issues of society as a whole. The poem was written around the time of the Industrial Revolution in England, which was a time of poverty and hunger. The standards of living of many people dropped and many people were forced to live on the streets. His experiences with the Industrial Revolution may have been the inspiration for this poem.

The line ‘In a rich and fruitful land’, in the first stanza, refers to the many material possessions that a country like England has with the word ‘rich’ and the word fruitful could refer to the production and agriculture that are present. A country like England has access to many resources that can help it grow and develop as a nation, however, children are reduced to living on the streets, and this is evident in the line ‘babes reduced to misery’. Juxtaposition is also used in this stanza to contrast the lines ‘in a rich and fruitful country’ and ‘fed with cold and usurious hand?’, this continues on with Blake’s questioning society and its virtues. In the next stanza Blake’s anger seems to come through more than his disbelief. He seems to be shocked that the children that were mentioned just in the last stanza are forced to sing praises to God, songs of joy, at the Holy Thursday ceremony. Blake expresses this shock with the line, ‘is that trembling cry a song?’. He is asking the responder if what he is hearing is a song because so many of the children are crying at once that it sounds like a song. Blake also suggests that England is a land of poverty in this poem. Even thought England is a nation of wealth and prosperity, there are such a large number of children that are living in terrible conditions, and even some living on the streets, it almost seems like a whole nation. This is why Blake says ‘it is a land of poverty’; he is referring to the massive amount of childhood homelessness.

The next stanza of Blake’s ‘Holy Thursday’ is a little more dark and depressing. In this stanza he uses lines like ‘their sun does never shine’ and ‘their fields are bleak and bare’. These lines have connotations of depression and sorrow. In this stanza Blake suggests that England is a land of ‘eternal winter’. This statement is supported by the references to the sun not shining and the bleakness of the landscape. In the next stanza the tone changes again. Blake says that in a land where the sun shines and the rain falls is the land that is not affected by poverty and children don’t go hungry. This land is clearly not England because in the previous stanza it is referred to as having  an ‘eternal winter’ and obviously in the cold, snowy winter of England the sun does not shine and the rain does not fall, instead it snows.

Overall, I think the message of ‘Holy Thursday’ by William Blake is that the physical landscape of England during the Industrial Revolution affects the inhabitants because children are poverty stricken and forced to live on the streets. This then affect the inner landscape of the inhabitants as it changes the way they view the world and they may never fully recover form that traumatic experience.

A.D. Hope’s ‘Australia’ can be compared to ‘Holy Thursday’ as both poems seem to contradict the way people view the environment. However, differences between these two poems can be seen as Hope suggests that the landscape is being changed and altered because of society’s greed. Whereas, in ‘Holy Thursday’, the poet is suggesting that unequal distribution of rights and resources, due to the affects of the Industrial Revolution, is what is destroying the inhabitant’s inner landscape.

My annotated version of Holy Thursday

In the Forest By Thomas Shapcott

In The Forest, By Thomas Shapcott is a poem about the impact of human action on the natural landscape and also the other inhabitants of that landscape. Thomas Shapcott is an Australian poet, playwright, editor, teacher and novelist. He has ad a very long and successful career as a pet and writer, with fifteen collections of poetry and six novels, and has won many awards for his work.

This poem empathises that the cutting down of one tree in a forest can impact not only the natural landscape of the forest, but a whole ecosystem of humans, animals and plants. Shapcott is trying to inform us of the affects of logging on the landscape and the inhabitants. The repetition of the word wait in the first stanza emphasises the fact that the animal inhabitants of the forest are waiting for the axe. This forces the responder to read the poem slower, hence, creating the slow tone that is created in the first few stanzas of the poem. The use of short sentences in this poem easily gets Shapcott’s message of the affect of destruction on the landscape and its inhabitants across. ‘The dark of the forest’ is an example of imagery in this poem. This has connotations of danger and darkness and makes the responder think that the forest that Shapcott is talking about is scary and dangerous. This suggests that the composer is trying to tell us that the constant destroying and logging of our natural landscape is having a very negative effect on the natural environment. Anthropomorphism can be seen in the next stanza where the bird is said to be ‘nervous’. This further emphasises that fact that the animals can sense what’s happening to their physical landscape and are waiting desperately for the moment their anticipating coming. ‘See them flinch and turn’ follows this line and suggests anxiety and nervousness, adding an element of heaviness to the poem.

‘Danger, the signs warn’ is seen at the end of the second stanza and suggests to the responder that the continuous destruction of the land will have tremendous consequences on, not only the land, but also the inhabitants and the way they exist within the landscape. The next line reads, ‘That! Slap of the axe. That!’, the repetition in this line immediately creates a excited, fast- passed tone and quickens the pace of the poem. Onomatopoeia can also be seen in this line in the word ‘slap’. In the next line of the stanza personification is used in the line ‘the tree is tensed’. This emphasises the fact that the inhabitants of the land are dramatically affected by the destruction of the physical landscape. The tree is so affected by the presence of such destructive human activity that it is forced to stand ridged, completely unmoving, in fear of the behaviour of human beings.

The reference to death in stanza five conveys the evil that is found in human activity and how in one short moment a living thing can die out all because of the irrational action of humans. The line ‘the gash in the forest’ alludes to the fact that the logging of one tree in a forest full of trees can leave and massive hole in the landscape and the inhabitants living within it. Personification is used once more in the sixth stanza in the line ‘now, says the axe, and the tree is fallen’. This line displays the immense power that humans have over nature. One word and a whole ecosystem of lives were lost. Shapcott then goes on to describe this. The line ‘the spider crushed in its secret nest’ conveys the way lives are so easily lost at the hand of humans. Death is represented again in the last stanza with the line ‘the skull of the forest is opened up’ this conveys how the forest has become an abandoned carcass of human distraction an emphasising how vulnerable the forest is to human activity. However, the final line of the poem reads, ‘But the birds have forgotten they have claimed other trees. They settle for sleep’ this line conveys that fact that logging and destruction of the forests and other natural landscapes has become such a usual occurrence that the inhabitants of the landscape have become quite accustomed to it. Though this poem Shapcott is trying to tell us that if logging continues to be allowed in Australia there will soon be no forest left and the damage done to our physical and even inner landscape will be irreversible.

I believe that ‘In the Forest’ by Thomas Shapcott has similarities to the poem ‘Flames and Dangling Wire’ because it conveys the consequences that human greed and destruction can have on the environment and physical landscape in which we live. The tip that is depictured in ‘Flames and Dangling Wire’ could be what will become of the forest that is seen in Shapcott’s poem if the barbaric destruction of the natural environment, because of human activity, doesn’t stop. It is also similar to ‘Flames and Dangling Wire’ because in both poems the personas seem to be persuading the responder to stop using the environment for our own personal gain and remember that the way we treat the physical landscape affects the inhabitants and their inner landscape.  

Sydney and the Bush By Les Murray

Sydney and the Bush, by Les Murray, is a poem that illustrates the impact of British settlement on the Australian identity and landscape. The poem displays the way that the development of Sydney has affected and changed the natural bushland of Australia. The poet, Les Murray, is an Australian poet and critic and has a literary career that spans over forty years. His poetry is generally seen as nationalistic and has a certain element of respect, even reverence, for the physical landscape of Australia. Murray often attacks modernism and writes about the importance of the land and its influence on the shaping of Australian character.

The techniques used in this poem help to convey a message about the relationship between the landscape and the inhabitant. This message is that the construction and development of western civilisation and European settlement has affected the natural and physical landscape of the Australia and its inhabitants. Because of the settlement of Europeans on Australian shores the physical landscape of the bush has changed forever and become Sydney.

Metaphors are used in, Murray’s ‘Sydney and the Bush’, for European settlers and Aboriginal Australians. One example of this is in stanza two where the white men and black men are compared, ‘the men of fire and men of earth’ this is a metaphor for European men and the Aboriginal Australians. The word fire has connotations of hell and is used to represent that European migrants, whereas, the word earth suggests nature and natural environment which is representing the Indigenous Australians.  The use of metaphors in this poem adds emphasise to the message and conveys the different ways in which Europeans and Aboriginals relate to their physical landscape.

Another technique that is used in this poem is juxtaposition. An example of this is the line ‘when Sydney and the bush meet now’. In this line the difference between the built landscape of Sydney and the natural environment that is the Australian bush is compared. The following line, ‘there is no common ground’, further emphasises that Sydney and the bush don’t have very much in common because it seems that we have decided that the two cannot co- exist. This helps to convey the message of the poem because it displays the many differences between the constructed, built up ‘civilisation’ that is Sydney and the untouched, natural landscape of the Australian bush.

‘Australia’, by A.D Hope, has some similarities with ‘Sydney and the Bush’ because Hope’s poem also has that tone and feel of the dislike of modernism. Which suggests that the poets dislike what is or has become of Australia. However this poem is different to some of the other poems that have been studied. One of these poems is ‘My Country’ by Dorothea Mackellar. ‘My Country’ is different to this poem because in that poem the persona has a different perception of the physical landscape of Australia than the persona of this poem. Mackellar has a deeper appreciation of British colonisation, whereas, Murray’s poem alludes to the fact that he feels that modern civilisation and European settlement has slowly destroyed the physical landscape of Australia.

My anotated version of Sydney and the Bush