Judith Arundell Wright (31 May 191525 June 2000) was an

Australian Australian(s) may refer to: Australia * Australia, a country * Australians, citizens of the Commonwealth of Australia ** European Australians ** Anglo-Celtic Australians, Australians descended principally from British colonists ** Aboriginal Aus ...

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator (thought, thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral t ...

environmentalist Environmentalism is a broad Philosophy of life, philosophy, ideology, and social movement about supporting life, habitats, and surroundings. While environmentalism focuses more on the environmental and nature-related aspects of Green politics, g ...

and campaigner for Aboriginal land rights. She was a recipient of the Christopher Brennan Award and nominated for the

Nobel Prize in Literature The Nobel Prize in Literature, here meaning ''for'' Literature (), is a Swedish literature prize that is awarded annually, since 1901, to an author from any country who has, in the words of the will of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, "in ...

1964 Events January * January 1 – The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland is dissolved. * January 5 – In the first meeting between leaders of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches since the fifteenth century, Pope Paul VI and Patria ...

1965 Events January–February * January 14 – The First Minister of Northern Ireland and the Taoiseach of the Republic of Ireland meet for the first time in 43 years. * January 20 ** Lyndon B. Johnson is Second inauguration of Lynd ...

and

1967 Events January * January 1 – Canada begins a year-long celebration of the 100th anniversary of Canadian Confederation, Confederation, featuring the Expo 67 World's Fair. * January 6 – Vietnam War: United States Marine Corps and Army of ...

Biography

Judith Wright was born in

Armidale, New South Wales Armidale is a city in the Northern Tablelands, New South Wales, Australia. Armidale had a population of 23,967 as of the 2021 census. Estimated resident population, 30 June 2018. It is the administrative centre for the Northern Tablelands, New ...

. The eldest child of Phillip Wright and his first wife, Ethel, she spent most of her formative years in

Brisbane Brisbane ( ; ) is the List of Australian capital cities, capital and largest city of the States and territories of Australia, state of Queensland and the list of cities in Australia by population, third-most populous city in Australia, with a ...

and

Sydney Sydney is the capital city of the States and territories of Australia, state of New South Wales and the List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city in Australia. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Syd ...

. Wright was of Cornish ancestry. Following the early death of her mother, she lived with her aunt and then boarded at New England Girls' School after her father's remarriage in 1929. After graduating, Wright studied philosophy, English, psychology and history at the

University of Sydney The University of Sydney (USYD) is a public university, public research university in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in both Australia and Oceania. One of Australia's six sandstone universities, it was one of the ...

. At the beginning of

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, she returned to her father's station (

ranch A ranch (from /Mexican Spanish) is an area of landscape, land, including various structures, given primarily to ranching, the practice of raising grazing livestock such as cattle and sheep. It is a subtype of farm. These terms are most often ap ...

) to help during the shortage of labour caused by the war. Wright's first book of poetry, ''The Moving Image'', was published in 1946 while she was working at the

University of Queensland The University of Queensland is a Public university, public research university located primarily in Brisbane, the capital city of the Australian state of Queensland. Founded in 1909 by the Queensland parliament, UQ is one of the six sandstone ...

as a research officer. Then, she had also worked with

Clem Christesen Clement Byrne Christesen (28 October 1911 – 28 June 2003) was the founder of the Australian literary magazine '' Meanjin''. He served as the magazine's editor from 1940 until 1974. Biography Early years Clement Byrne Christesen was born and ...

on the literary magazine ''

Meanjin ''Meanjin'' (), formerly ''Meanjin Papers'' and ''Meanjin Quarterly'', is one of Australia's longest-running literary magazines. Established in 1940 in Brisbane, it moved to Melbourne in 1945 and as of 2008 is an editorially independent impri ...

,'' the first edition of which was published in late 1947. In 1950 she moved to Mount Tamborine, Queensland, with the novelist and abstract philosopher Jack McKinney. Their daughter Meredith was born in the same year. They married in 1962, but Jack was to live only until 1966. In 1966, she published ''The Nature of Love'', her first collection of short stories, through Sun Press, Melbourne. Set mainly in Queensland, they include 'The Ant-lion', 'The Vineyard Woman', 'Eighty Acres', 'The Dugong', 'The Weeping Fig' and 'The Nature of Love', all first published in The Bulletin. Wright was nominated for the 1967

Nobel Prize for Literature The Nobel Prize in Literature, here meaning ''for'' Literature (), is a Swedish literature prize that is awarded annually, since 1901, to an author from any country who has, in the words of the will of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, "in t ...

. With

David Fleay David Howells Fleay (; 6 January 1907 – 7 August 1993) was an Australian scientist and natural history, biologist who pioneered the captive breeding of endangered species, and was the first person to breed the platypus (''Ornithorhynchu ...

, Kathleen McArthur and Brian Clouston, Wright was a founding member and, from 1964 to 1976, president, of the Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland. In 1991, she was the second Australian to receive the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. She was involved in the Poets Union. For the last three decades of her life, Wright lived near the New South Wales town of Braidwood. She moved to the Braidwood area to be closer to H. C. "Nugget" Coombs, her lover of 25 years, who was based in Canberra. Wright started to lose her hearing in her mid-20s and became completely deaf by 1992.

Poet and critic

Wright was the author of collections of poetry, including ''The Moving Image'', ''Woman to Man'', ''The Gateway'', ''The Two Fires'', ''Birds'', ''The Other Half'', ''Magpies'', ''Shadow'' and ''Hunting Snake''. Her work is noted for a keen focus on the Australian environment, which began to gain prominence in Australian art in the years following World War II. She deals with the relationship between settlers, Indigenous Australians and the bush, among other themes. Wright's aesthetic centres on the relationship between mankind and the environment, which she views as the catalyst for poetic creation. Her images characteristically draw from the Australian flora and fauna, yet contain a mythic substrata that probes at the poetic process, limitations of language, and the correspondence between inner existence and objective reality. Wright's poems have been translated into a number of languages, including

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, Japanese and Russian. Along with Brendan Kennelly, she is the most featured poet in ''The Green Book of Poetry'', a large ecopoetry anthology by Ivo Mosley (Frontier Publishing 1993), which was published by Harper San Francisco in 1996 as ''Earth Poems: Poems from Around the World to Honor the Earth''.

''Birds''

In 2003, the National Library of

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

published an expanded edition of Wright's collection titled ''Birds''. Most of these poems were written in the 1950s when she was living on Tamborine Mountain in southeast

Queensland Queensland ( , commonly abbreviated as Qld) is a States and territories of Australia, state in northeastern Australia, and is the second-largest and third-most populous state in Australia. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Austr ...

. Meredith McKinney, Wright's daughter, writes that they were written at "a precious and dearly-won time of warmth and bounty to counterbalance at last what felt, in contrast, the chilly dearth and difficulty of her earlier years". McKinney goes on to say that "many of these poems have a newly relaxed, almost conversational tone and rhythm, an often humorous ease and an intimacy of voice that surely reflects the new intimacies and joys of her life". Despite the joy reflected in the poems, however, they also acknowledge "the experiences of cruelty, pain and death that are inseparable from the lives of birds as of humans ... and urna sorrowing a clear-sighted gaze on the terrible damage we have done and continue to do to our world, even as we love it".

Environmentalism and social activism

Wright campaigned in support of the conservation of the

Great Barrier Reef The Great Barrier Reef is the world's largest coral reef system, composed of over 2,900 individual reefs and 900 islands stretching for over over an area of approximately . The reef is located in the Coral Sea, off the coast of Queensland, ...

and Fraser Island. With some of her friends, she helped found one of the earliest nature conservation movements. She was also an advocate for Aboriginal land rights. Tom Shapcott, reviewing ''With Love and Fury'', her posthumous collection of selected letters published in 2007, comments that her letter on this topic to the Australian prime minister

John Howard John Winston Howard (born 26 July 1939) is an Australian former politician who served as the 25th prime minister of Australia from 1996 to 2007. He held office as leader of the Liberal Party of Australia. His eleven-year tenure as prime min ...

was "almost brutal in its scorn". Shortly before her death, she attended a march in

Canberra Canberra ( ; ) is the capital city of Australia. Founded following the Federation of Australia, federation of the colonies of Australia as the seat of government for the new nation, it is Australia's list of cities in Australia, largest in ...

for reconciliation between non-indigenous Australians and the Aboriginal people.

Awards

* 1975 – Christopher Brennan Award * 1991 – Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry * 1994 – Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Poetry Award for ''Collected Poems'' In 2009 as part of the

Q150 Q150 was the sesquicentenary (150th anniversary) of the Separation of Queensland from New South Wales in 1859. Separation established the Colony of Queensland which became the State of Queensland in 1901 as part of the Federation of Australia ...

celebrations, Judith Wright was announced as one of the Q150 Icons of Queensland for her role as an "Influential Artists".

Death and legacy

Wright died in Canberra on 25 June 2000, aged 85. Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Art

In June 2006 the

Australian Electoral Commission The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) is the independent statutory agency of the Australian Government responsible for the management and oversight of Australian federal elections, plebiscites, referendums and some trade union A ...

(AEC) announced that the new federal electorate in

, which was to be created at the 2007 federal election, would be named Wright in honour of her accomplishments as a "poet and in the areas of arts, conservation and indigenous affairs in Queensland and Australia". However, in September 2006 the AEC announced it would name the seat after John Flynn, the founder of the Royal Flying Doctor Service, due to numerous objections from people fearing the name Wright may be linked to disgraced former Queensland ALP MP Keith Wright. Under the 2009 redistribution of Queensland, a new seat in southeast Queensland was created and named in Wright's honour; it was first contested in

2010 The year saw a multitude of natural and environmental disasters such as the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and the 2010 Chile earthquake. The 2009 swine flu pandemic, swine flu pandemic which began the previous year ...

. The Judith Wright Arts Centre in Fortitude Valley, Brisbane, is named after her. On 2 January 2008, it was announced that a future suburb in the district of Molonglo Valley,

would be named "Wright". There is a street in the Canberra suburb of Franklin named after her, as well. Another of the Molonglo Valley suburbs was named after Wright's lover, "Nugget" Coombs. The Judith Wright Award was awarded as part of the ACT Poetry Award by the

ACT Government The Government of the Australian Capital Territory, also referred to as the Australian Capital Territory Government or ACT Government, is the executive branch of the Australian Capital Territory. The leader of the party or coalition with the Con ...

between 2005 and 2011, for a published book of poems by an Australian poet. The Judith Wright Poetry Prize for New and Emerging Poets (worth ), was established in 2007 by '' Overland'' magazine. The Judith Wright Calanthe Award has been awarded as part of the

Queensland Premier's Literary Awards The Queensland Premier's Literary Awards were an Australian suite of literary awards inaugurated in 1999 and disestablished in 2012. It was one of the most generous suites of literary awards within Australia, with $225,000 in prize money across ...

since 2004.

Bibliography

Poetry

Collections

* ''

The Moving Image The Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization established to advance the field of moving image archiving by fostering cooperation among individuals and organizations concerned with the acquisition, ...

'' (1946) * '' Woman to Man'' (1949) * * ''The Gateway'' (1953) * '' The Two Fires'' (1955) * ''Australian Bird Poems'' (1961) * ''Birds: Poems'', Angus and Robertson, 1962; * ''Five Senses: Selected Poems'' (1963) * ''Selected Poems'' (1963) * ''The Other Half'' (1966) * ''The Nature of Love''(1966) * ''Collected Poems 1942-1970'' (1971) * ''Alive: Poems 1971–72'' (1973) * ''Poets On Record 9'' (University of Queensland Press, 1973) Selected works, issued with a 7" record of Wright reading her own poems. * ''Fourth Quarter and Other Poems'' (1976) * ''The Double Tree: Selected Poems 1942–76'' (1978) * ''Phantom Dwelling'' (1985) * ''Five Senses: Selected Poems'' (1989) * ''A Human Pattern: Selected Poems'' (1990) * ''The Flame Tree'' (1993) * ''Collected poems, 1942–1985'', Angus & Robertson (1994) * ''Grace and Other Poems'' (2009) * ''Tamborine Mountain Poems of Judith Wright'' (2010) * ''Poemas escogidos,'' Pre-textos, 2020, (Spanish translation by José Luis Fernández Castillo)

Selected list of poems

Literary criticism

* ''William Baylebridge and the modern problem'' (Canberra University College, 1955) * ''Charles Harpur'' (1963) * ''Preoccupations in Australian Poetry'' (1965) * ''The Poet's Pen'' (1965) (an anthology of poetry selected by Wright with A.K. Thomson) * ''Henry Lawson'' (Great Australians Series) (1967) * ''Because I Was Invited'' (1975) * ''Going on Talking'' (1991)

Other works

* ''Kings of the Dingoes'' (1958) Oxford University Press, Melbourne * ''The Generations of Men'', illustrated by Alison Forbes (1959) * ''Range the Mountains High'' (1962) * ''The Nature of Love'' (1966) Sun Books, Melbourne * "The Battle of the Biosphere" (''Outlook'' magazine article 1970) * "'Witnesses of spring: unpublished poems of Shaw Neilson'', edited by Wright, with poems selected by Wright and Val Vallis, from material selected by Ruth Harrison (1970) * ''The Coral Battleground'' (1977) * ''The Cry for the Dead'' (1981) * ''We Call for a Treaty'' (1985) * * ''Half a Lifetime'' (Text, 2001) * ''Judith Wright: Selected Writings'' (2022) ed. Georgina Arnott, La Trobe University Press & Black Inc

Letters

* ''The Equal Heart and Mind: Letters between Judith Wright and Jack McKinney''. Edited by Patricia Clarke and Meredith McKinney (UQP, 2004) * ''With Love and Fury: Selected letters of Judith Wright'', edited by Patricia Clarke and Meredith McKinney (

National Library of Australia The National Library of Australia (NLA), formerly the Commonwealth National Library and Commonwealth Parliament Library, is the largest reference library in Australia, responsible under the terms of the ''National Library Act 1960'' for "mainta ...

, 2006) * ''Portrait of a friendship: the letters of Barbara Blackman and Judith Wright, 1950–2000'', edited by Bryony Cosgrove (Miegunyah Press, 2007) , Review
/ref>

References

External links

Poems
at Oldpoetry.com
Judith Wright digital story, educational interview and oral history
John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland, 12 June 2013. 6min, 36min and 56min version available to view online.

Interview at

Radio National ABC Radio National, more commonly known as Radio National or simply RN, is an Australian nationwide public service radio network run by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). From 1947 until 1985, the network was known as ABC Radio 2. ...

Gardening at the 'Edge': Judith Wright's desert garden, Mongarlowe, New South Wales
by Katie Holmes

by Veronica Brady

by Gig Ryan
The Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts
Website
Two Fires: Festival of Arts and Activism
Celebration of Judith Wright's legacy
Sue King-Smith 'Ancestral Echoes: Spectres of the Past in Judith Wright's Poetry' ''JASAL'' Special Issue 2007
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wright, Judith 1915 births 2000 deaths Australian environmentalists Australian women environmentalists Australian human rights activists Australian women human rights activists Australian literary critics Australian women literary critics Australian nature writers People from Armidale Australian people of Cornish descent Deaf poets Women science writers Writers from Brisbane Writers from Sydney Australian women poets 20th-century Australian women writers 20th-century Australian poets Australian deaf people Australian women artists Deaf activists Australian activists with disabilities