Coolabah, No.16, 2015, ISSN 1988-5946, Observatori: Centre d’Estudis Australians / 

Australian Studies Centre, Universitat de Barcelona 

 
 

48 
 

Negotiating ‘Negative Capability’: The Role of Place in Writing 
 

 

Lynda Hawryluk and Leni Shilton 

Southern Cross University 

Lynda.Hawryluk@scu.edu.au  

l.shilton.10@student.scu.edu.au  

 

 

 

Copyright©Lynda Hawryluk and Leni Shilton 2015. This text 

may be archived and redistributed both in electronic form and in 

hard copy, provided that the author and journal are properly 

cited and no fee is charged. 

 

 

Abstract: Taking its lead from the poet John Keats‟ notion of „negative capability‟ 

(1891, p. 48), this paper explores the methodology of representing landscapes in 

writing, specifically using place to effect the process of „…being capable of being in 

uncertainties, Mysteries, doubt, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason…‟ 

(ibid). Keats refers to the poet as „taking part‟ in the life of the poem (1891, p. 48).  

Being in the poem this way attempts to allow the reader to experience the emotion of 

the poem. Mary Oliver extrapolated this by referring to „the “mere” diction of the poem 

[being] the vehicle that holds then transfers from the page to the reader an absolutely 

essential quality of real feeling‟ (1994, p 84). 

 

This paper focuses on the work of two Australian writers whose work captures in verse 

a sense of connection to rugged and remote terrains. To evoke this sense of connection, 

Keats‟ negative capability comes into play. This moment is described here as a 

metaphysical space where a meditative state provides the writer with moments 

described in this paper as a „glimpse‟. The „glimpse‟ is a recognition of that moment of 

connection, without which „poetry cannot happen‟ (Oliver, 1994 p. 84). For our 

purposes here, we read this as being about the connection to a place as written on the 

page and how that then broadens out upon reading to become a connection to something 

beyond the notion of specific place. Keats own words speak to this possibility, of 

allowing uncertainty to provide a sense of meaning and connection. 

 

This paper demonstrates, via creative practice and the work of like-minded Australian 

poets, the internal and external processes that take place to facilitate the „glimpse‟ and 

inform our own writing about landscapes. This writing is individually informed by 

knowledge about environment and notions of poetic space, where „aspects of the 

unconscious move into consciousness‟ (Hetherington, 2012 p. 8). The authors will 

explore the commonalities and distinctions between their work, using brief examples.  

 

Keywords: Landscape, poetry, glimpse 

mailto:Lynda.Hawryluk@scu.edu.au
mailto:l.shilton.10@student.scu.edu.au


Coolabah, No.16, 2015, ISSN 1988-5946, Observatori: Centre d’Estudis Australians / 

Australian Studies Centre, Universitat de Barcelona 

 
 

49 
 

Introduction 
 

 

The role of place in writing, and specifically how place is both evoked and echoed in 

words providing a reader with insight to location and landscape is the focus of this 

paper. The moment of evocation and echo is described here as the „glimpse‟. This will 

be demonstrated by way of discussion, and examples from Australian poetry to provide 

the reader with an evocation of this „glimpse‟. The discussion also explores notions of 

creativity that connect our individual creative practice, and how it attempts to capture 

moments of creativity. 

 

The writing is situated in the Australian landscape, a place we describe as „edge 

country‟, but the ideas here might be applied to works in other languages and contexts 

with the purpose of affecting a similar evocative response. The experience of the 

„glimpse‟ could be seen to transcend language and culture, allowing for a unique insight 

into how place effects and informs writing and reading of poetry. 

 

This paper will provide some background to our work, beginning with situating the 

landscape that inspires it and us. Through the discussion of our place/s, a sense of 

commonality and distinction can be established about our respective sense of place.  

 

 

The Sub-Tropics (Lynda) 

 

 

My work is located in Central Queensland, Australia, in a region known as Capricornia 

– so named for its position on the Tropic of Capricorn. Yeppoon is a town of some 

20,000 people, eight hours drive north of the nearest capital city Brisbane. It is perched 

on the edge of the Pacific in Keppel Bay, the location of the Keppel Islands group, 

including the abandoned resort on Great Keppel Is. and over one hundred other 

uninhabited small islands dotted along the Great Barrier Reef. Within this town is the 

community of Cooee Bay, where Matthew Flinders passed by in 1804 and a ship was 

dashed onto rocks in 1848 at a place now called Wreck Point. The place is the 

traditional home to the Woppaburra people, on the islands, and the Darumbal on the 

land, where important sites like Gawula (Mt Wheeler) are recognized as sacred, but 

unfortunately also the location of great injustices, with forced removal of island 

dwellers from Kanomi (North Keppel Island) and barbaric treatment of Indigenous 

people around Gawula (Mt Wheeler). The Capricornia region is a place of harsh 

contrasts, both beautiful and brutal in equal measure. 

 

Initially the seemingly limitless space and black darkness at night in Central 

Queensland intimidated me in a way the freeways and crowds of the city of my birth 

never had. The landscape of Central Queensland seems dry and unforgiving, but the 

sub-tropics on the coast are teeming with wildlife and rich with pockets of rainforest, 

broken only by dry sweltering scrub to the West and the iridescent Pacific Ocean to the 



Coolabah, No.16, 2015, ISSN 1988-5946, Observatori: Centre d’Estudis Australians / 

Australian Studies Centre, Universitat de Barcelona 

 
 

50 
 

East. Sitting in the middle of these two extremes provided an interesting contrast, one 

highlighted by the sometimes formidable weather: crushing humidity and the real threat 

of cyclones, floods and storm surges.  

 

Life in Capricornia is a negotiation between the expectations of human habitation and 

the realities of the landscape and ecology of the place.  My writing in Capricornia is all 

about the unstructured and unrestrained, and the inherent beauty of being in a place that 

consumes you in its vastness. The steel and concrete buildings, black streets and endless 

cars of the city are replaced with an entirely different population of subtropical plants 

and animals, and with the brilliant sky and sea.  My reaction to this place and the 

negotiation of my relationship with it, as well as the longing for this place being as a 

site of querencia (a feeling like home) is the focus of my work.  

 

 

The Centre (Leni): 

 

 

The focus of my writing is based in Central Australia, where I have lived and worked 

for 27 years. Over these years I have travelled widely throughout the region for my 

work and visiting friends who live in remote parts of Central Australia. Alice Springs is 

the main town in the area with a population of around 30,000 people; it is located at the 

southern end of the Northern Territory, more than 1600km to the nearest beach in any 

direction.  

 

The desert becomes part of you if you live in it long enough.  This is what has happened 

to me. The desert has become the focus of my thoughts and thus my writing, a 

landscape that is so familiar to me it is just known. A journey along a certain bush road 

is important because of all the past journeys I have taken, as well as the current one. The 

landscape is recognisable and even with dramatic changes to the vegetation over many 

years, it is familiar, and as I travel through it, it is anticipated. A turn in the road, the 

spine of a mountain range, the rust colour at sunset, all known, like they are extensions 

of me and not me at the same time.  

 

Alice Springs is set in the desert country of the Arrente people, called Mparntwe in the 

Arrente language. Rivers only flow after rain. The stunning country is a physical 

representation of ancient dreaming stories. The country itself tells the story of creations 

and shows the journeys taken by creation beings as they travelled across the land 

making water holes, mountain ranges and rock formations (Turner & McDonald 2010; 

Wallace 2009; Rubuntja & Green 2002; Brookes 1991). 

 

Many local Aboriginal language speakers speak their mother tongue and an array of 

languages that surround them depending on where family movements take them and 

into which language group they marry. Most of my Aboriginal students were fluent in 

four Aboriginal languages and could „hear‟ another three or four.  

 



Coolabah, No.16, 2015, ISSN 1988-5946, Observatori: Centre d’Estudis Australians / 

Australian Studies Centre, Universitat de Barcelona 

 
 

51 
 

My writing has its basis in the experiences and knowledge of this country, expressed in 

an understanding of the landscape and the people who inhabit it. Recurrent in my 

writing are the themes of loss, isolation and transformation explored through place and 

history of place. This with knowledge is built on over many years through an experience 

of place drawn from living and working with traditional owners. In my PhD project I 

am investigating these themes through history by exploring the life of an historical 

figure.  Bertha Strehlow lived in Central Australia in the 1930s, and travelled by camel 

through the desert with her husband and three Aboriginal camel handlers. She is thought 

to be the first white woman to see Uluru and Kata Tjuta.  Using the device of the verse 

novel, I explore her growing sense of understanding of the landscape as she travels 

through it in the winter of 1936 and comes perilously close to death on the journey.   

 

I am interested in the contrasts I find in the experiences of the first white settlers to 

Central Australia, their sense of wonderment at the landscape and the people, and the 

stories of the traditional owners, which explain that wonderment in very practical terms 

of the storied landscape (San Roque & Santospirito 2013). Through my poetry I explore 

the multiple layers of history of place. 

 

 

Capturing place and belonging 
 

 

This paper examines how our work corresponds to our respective sense of place and 

belonging, and capturing that for the reader. We are attempting to explore and define 

our understanding of the glimpse; that moment of knowing and becoming.  

 

Australian poet and academic Martin Harrison, in his analysis of this process, says: 

 

The eye and voice, which can invent such vision [in poetry] and invent it 

out of such a momentarily remembered fragment can only come from a 

poet operating on the boundary of known and unknown areas of awareness 

(2007 p. 59).  

 

For us, writing poetry is a distillation process. Knowledge, experience and memory 

work together to produce a tone or thought for the poetry to work. Poet and academic 

Jay Parini (2008) writes that to be a poet is to be mindful of the nature of the art 

„especially in terms of language [working ] as a kind of echo-chamber in which the 

origins of words enhance their...denotations and connotations‟ (pp. x-xi). Understanding 

the gulf between „mental images and real images, between spirit and nature‟ (p. x), 

allows the poetry to have its own „inner logic, an inner necessity of its own‟ (Pretty 

2001, p. 3).  

 

Les Murray (2006) writes of the experience of writing about place from memory, „it 

was so when we were there‟ he says with confidence, an idea reiterated by Harrison in 

his discussion on Australian poetry; „it will derive from what is captured in the self 



Coolabah, No.16, 2015, ISSN 1988-5946, Observatori: Centre d’Estudis Australians / 

Australian Studies Centre, Universitat de Barcelona 

 
 

52 
 

reflective, closely felt and technologically aware engagement… to place and 

environment‟ (2007 p. 55). A strong sense of place informs our work. The poems grow 

through knowledge and memory. Academic Tom Lee talks about poetry as „the most 

direct way to account for the complexity of perceptual experiences‟ the sensory 

moments are „read‟ through our skin (2013), thus the poet can express what takes place 

in a moment.  

 

 

‘Negative capability’ 

 

 

John Keats first posited the idea of being capable and open to the uncertainties of doubt 

in relation to the process of creativity. He called this „negative capability‟ in a letter to 

his brothers after a heated discussion with a friend (Keats 1891 pp. 46-48). It may be 

seen that Keats is referring to a kind of higher order experience than that of 

consciousness, something almost divine. This echoes the discussion of the origins of 

creativity by celebrated author Elizabeth Gilbert (TED, 2010). Keats referred to 

Coleridge‟s experience of being able to let go of what he might call „fact and reason‟ by 

resorting to a sense of beauty which substituted for explanation of experience. We take 

our lead from these concepts for the purposes of this paper and in relation to our work, 

extrapolating them to describe that place where the poet is putting themselves willingly 

into a space and place (both within and without) of doubt. It is an attempt to be in the 

moment, to be present and in a place of trust. This is a place of risk and for us it 

facilitates the act and practice of creativity.  

 

The negative element of this process of course is that it may not be an entirely 

comfortable one. The poet may not feel at ease with the process, with what they are 

seeing, going through and feeling. Australian poet and academic Kevin Brophy 

discusses an acceptance of the moment, saying of this experience; „Perhaps it is enough 

that the piece of writing disturbs the surface of our lives for a moment‟ (2003 p. 222). 

This period of discomfort is described by Dominique Hecq as a „disturbance‟ (2012). 

Hecq describes walking around as she writes a poem, and being physically in the 

moment, but that moment being one of agitation, a feeling of imbalance. This walking 

around allows the process of creativity to be enacted. The lines come to her and she is 

able to let the poem arrive, the act of walking providing a rhythm for the line to rest in. 

 

Being the recipient of words that arrive in a moment predicated to being accepting of 

imbalance, echoes Elizabeth Gilbert‟s description of the muse and the arrival of creative 

ideas (2010) and the sometimes active role the writer must play in being receptive to 

moments of doubt and imbalance.  

 

 

Taking part in the life of the poem 

 

 



Coolabah, No.16, 2015, ISSN 1988-5946, Observatori: Centre d’Estudis Australians / 

Australian Studies Centre, Universitat de Barcelona 

 
 

53 
 

We call this sense of being receptive „taking part in the life of the poem‟, that is, taking 

an active role in its creation. In relation to Keats, this means being receptive to being in 

the moment, of existing in the poem and giving yourself up to it. This knowledge is 

informed by location, and influenced by the space and sense of belonging. Les Murray 

in the writing of his poetry has been described as „watching with his mouth‟, taking his 

poem Three Interiors as an example: „The books themselves, that vertical live leather 

brickwork/…have all turned their backs/ on the casual tourists and, clasped in 

mediation, they pray/in coined Greek…‟ he „courts the senses, pointing as it does to 

sight, sound and touch‟ (Steele 2002 p. 177). Knowing the place intimately provides the 

poet with the opportunity to write into the moment. Harrison calls this use of memory to 

enrich the writing „a sense of late light brought momentarily into consciousness‟ (2007 

p. 59).  

 

By inhabiting the space of the poem and the landscape it is set in, there is a sense of 

being in it, which then opens up possibilities for revisiting this sense when reading and 

responding to the work. In effect, this sense of inhabiting the space of the poem can 

happen in the landscape it reflects, and can be evoked later at a distance from the 

landscape for the reader.  

 

Feelings of imbalance and uncertainty are transferred to the reader, and a symbiotic 

connection is formed. It is a response to the particular physical space and place of the 

poem itself. The reader experiences a clear and essential vision of the poem rather than 

being conscious of how the poet arrived at that moment. Thus they experience the 

distillation of what is at the very essence of the poem and the senses in the poem as if 

they themselves were in that place.  Much as the experience of the poet themselves, the 

reader then experiences this sense of not knowing, a disturbance imbued in not knowing 

what‟s going to come by being in the place, and exposing oneself to this possibility. 

This happens in a very physically embodying way, in a conscious act of enabling and 

allowing the moment to arrive.   This process is expressed by Keats in his letters (1891 

p. 10) as he describes his agitation in the writing/creation of the poem, but in the poem 

itself the agitation is subtle, more like a tremor if felt at all, and lies in the symbols and 

metaphors within the poem. 

 

 

The methodology of representing landscapes 

 

 

Understanding and knowledge about the history of place provides a point to write from 

with historians, anthropologists and creative writers contributing to the growing canon 

of post-colonial writing. Jay Arthur (2003) in her exploration of how language has 

historically influenced attitudes to place, documents that colonialists consistently 

viewed the landscape in terms of English perceptions of country and landscape (2003, 

pp. 1-3). The colours, vegetation and landscape of the English countryside were the 

default expectation in the thinking of settlers, explorers and visitors to Central Australia. 

The fertile green images of the English countryside were in stark contrast to the 



Coolabah, No.16, 2015, ISSN 1988-5946, Observatori: Centre d’Estudis Australians / 

Australian Studies Centre, Universitat de Barcelona 

 
 

54 
 

Australian landscape, which was viewed as dry, barren and empty. 

 

Ross Gibson, quoted in Bird Rose‟s Nourishing Terrains (1996, p. 18) comments on the 

„English‟ imaging of country. He says: „Every Old World hectare has been ridden over, 

written over, and inscribed into an elaborate and all engrossing national history.‟ 

Further to this, O‟Connor mirrors Gibson‟s observations when speaking about the 

laying of history in Ireland (1992):  

 

the landscape is thoroughly humanised. It is therefore imbued with cultural 

meaning, being the concrete expression of the states of mind, now and in the 

past, and just like a book or a parchment much written upon and written 

over, its interpretation awaits the discerning reader… (p. 8). 

 

In Europe then, it might be considered that the country is written over by the people and 

in Central Australia the people are written over by the country. 

 

Nicholson Gill proposes that the early settler desire to change and mark the land comes 

from a wider assumption of colonialism, part of the late 19
th
 century „European 

expansionism‟ as he explains: 

 

The wilderness landscape is essentially unformed, chaotic, innocent and 

uninhabited. Classically, the garden is a step towards culture. It is the 

crucible of domestic life and the active transformation of the earth for 

human ends… (2005, p. 79). 

 

The land was already and continues to be inscribed and mapped with the stories of the 

Aboriginal owners. The texts which describe the dreaming stories and legends including 

TGH Strehlow‟s work The Songs of Central Australia (Strehlow 1971), The Arunta 

(Spencer & Gillen 1927) and more recently The Arrernte Landscape of Alice Springs 

(Brooks 1991) speak of „knowing‟ and „being‟ with the land (Gill 2005, p. 78). Though 

writers of historical texts on language and culture until recent years have written as if 

looking through a „white lens‟, as observed by Attwood: 

 

Historians…have to rely on texts created by white people. We never have 

Aboriginal voices [in history] unless white people recount (and invariably 

reformulate) these in their writings (2005, pp. 159-60). 

 

Carter (1996, p. 25) writes of the process of writing history, place and exploring 

characters to make a new history: 

 

This process of bringing places „into being‟ dissolves the distinction 

between autobiography and history; to affiliate successfully to the new 

environment was to be initiated into a new history, but also envisage 

different ways of telling history. 

 



Coolabah, No.16, 2015, ISSN 1988-5946, Observatori: Centre d’Estudis Australians / 

Australian Studies Centre, Universitat de Barcelona 

 
 

55 
 

The enactment of the glimpse is about looking deeper than the surface of the landscape, 

the act of writing into it and acknowledging the history and how it informs our 

understanding of the place. The notion of the glimpse seeks to acknowledge the echoes 

of resonance in the landscape. This corresponds in particular to the work of Dening 

(2006) and Griffiths (1996) who describe history in a present sense, and depict history 

effecting place in an active way. Oodgeroo Noonuccal pointed to this in her landmark 

poem, The Past: 'Let no one say the past is dead. The past is about us and within 

us' (1966). 

 

 

Poetry examples: Australian poets capture the glimpse  

 

 

To better understand the evocation of the glimpse, it is helpful to look specifically at 

writers who respond to their environment and evoke a sense of belonging in their work. 

These first examples demonstrate this sense of becoming and being, with reference to 

Australian poets whose work echoes the themes of our own.  

 

Judith Wright: 

from Dust 

 

This sick dust, spiralling with the wind, 

is harsh as grief‟s taste in our mouths 

and has eclipsed the small sun.  

This remnant earth turns evil, 

the steel-shocked earth has turned against the plough 

and runs with wind all day, and all night 

sighs in our sleep against the windowpane. (Wright 1995 p. 23-4) 

 

  

Barry Hill: 

From Back 

 

Returning inland 

 seasons later 

  a lizard waits for me. 

Clatter in the kitchen. 

 Length across the frying pan. 

  I thought it‟s thump 

and scuttle 

 a bird on the roof 

  it has striped rings 

runs of sand down its tail. 

  eyes like ants. (Hill 2001, p. 49) 

 



Coolabah, No.16, 2015, ISSN 1988-5946, Observatori: Centre d’Estudis Australians / 

Australian Studies Centre, Universitat de Barcelona 

 
 

56 
 

Bronwyn Lee:  

From Seven feet and where they’re from  

 

The Aboriginal Foot 

  

The woman‟s features 

are preserved on the eastern end 

 

of the gorge, and her story is  

preserved in a dance at the base  

of the red rock, her daughter‟s feet 

dragging through the sand to leave 

the meandering tracks of a snake. (Lea 2001 p. 10) 

 

Deb Westbury 

From Leaving Wollongong Harbour 

 

the trawlers 

are already parting the pink ripples of sunrise 

out beyond the breakwater. 

 

the black wharf glitters 

with great drifts  

of wet-silver scales. (Westbury 2002 p. 18) 

 

The final two examples here are representative of the work that echoes our own, in 

terms of location and theme: 

 

In Central Australia, Meg Mooney: 

From Christmas 

 

Grey bead curtains of rain 

over the waterhole  

mud red water bubbling  

in our drains around the tarp. 

 

gums danced golden 

in fields of couch grass 

the rock wall beamed  

red as ininti seeds.   (Mooney 2005 p. 57)  

 

From Central Queensland, Kristin Hannaford: 

Intertidal Zone 

only the trace of clayed footprints wind through the mangroves.  



Coolabah, No.16, 2015, ISSN 1988-5946, Observatori: Centre d’Estudis Australians / 

Australian Studies Centre, Universitat de Barcelona 

 
 

57 
 

 

for here is the landscape full of bodily sounds, heaving itself fricative and hoarse 

reinventing terrain over and again with each shifting hour.  

 

Scents of decay claw and rise quick with water when it comes 

(2004) 

 

Mary Oliver and the experience of the ‘glimpse’ 

 

 

The „glimpse‟ is a moment of distillation and inspiration that leads to the generation of a 

poem, achieved by complete absorption in the moment, observation of the senses and a 

deep awareness of the landscape. Poets have described this moment of revelation as 

being in the physicality of moment immersed in the landscape, or spiritually, where a 

revelation takes place, for instance in a moment of meditation, or in a dream (Magee 

2009, Gilbert 2010, Lawrence 2012). But however the moment or glimpse may appear, 

it is not completely random. It presents as a result of intense knowledge and 

understanding of place through both the lived experience and through research.  

 

As poets we strive for this moment of capture and when it is achieved the glimpse 

evokes emotion and nostalgia. As we write this into the landscape, we are also writing 

about the past - the history of place. This compels us to write of the troubled history as 

well as the beauty that rests in the land, thus the poems arise from an intuitive 

awareness as well as a deep consciousness.  

 

Hirsch further describes this process:  

 

…the words [come] off the page into my own mouth – in transit, in action. 

I generate – I re-create – the words incantatory, the words liberated and 

self-reflexive…in poetry the words enact – they make manifest –what they 

describe (1999 p.p9-10). 

 

The glimpse may be related to the idea of the muse or the creative spark but in our 

understanding of it, it relates to the inner versus outer landscape. In this rendering, the 

outer is about the landscape that is known – what we have seen and read. To the point 

where… „a place has to become an inner landscape for imagination to start to inhabit 

[it]…‟ (Calvino in Gislason 2013 p. 16).  To reach beyond this space, the writer or 

reader needs to bypass normal thought processes to access the richness of thought which 

will become a poem (Dillard 1990 pp. 10-11). Advice about turning off the editor 

comes into play. Natalie Goldberg suggests „Let everything run through us and grab as 

much as we can of it with a pen and paper‟ (1990 p. 33) thus permission is given to get 

back to that moment and in doing so the reader can touch and reach that space and 

therefore that place. Described by Doris Lessing as „wool-gathering‟, the process 



Coolabah, No.16, 2015, ISSN 1988-5946, Observatori: Centre d’Estudis Australians / 

Australian Studies Centre, Universitat de Barcelona 

 
 

58 
 

requires switching off and entering an unconscious space of creativity, the „creative 

dark‟ (in Brophy 2003 p. 220). 

 

For the writer, there is a need to go to that place / location to write about it, and once 

there, to let go of external influences, and accept being entirely influenced by the outer 

world and landscape the writer is connected to at that moment. The inner of this 

scenario is the writing and using external knowledge to create that moment.  

 

Poet Mary Oliver says such poems: 

 

brim from the particular, the regional, the personal, and become – as all 

successful poems must –“parables” that say something finally about our 

own lives, as well as the lives of their authors… they glow with 

unmistakable universal meaning  (1994 p. 80).  

 

The poems speak and allow a truth to arise, often in a moment that surprises the poet as 

well as the reader.  

 

 

Poetry examples 

 

 

The evocation of the glimpse within our work demonstrates the focus of the discussion 

thus far. This is the glimpse in action, bringing the reader to the place the poetry derives 

from. Each poem features an annotation to foreground the work in historical, cultural or 

personal frameworks. 

 

A tropical heart 

 

A tropical heart surrounds us 

Like the layers of a sugary Smoothie
1
 

Warm wet tenderness, protecting us from harm 

  

A covering of rough spiked skin 

Defends our inner territory 

From conquering armies of ants 

 

A crown of thorns signifies our stature 

Reaching the heavens with upstretched fronds 

The monarch of all we survey 

 

My tropical heart beats softly 

Encased in this deep cavern of flesh 

                                                        
1 A Smoothie is a variety of pineapple.  



Coolabah, No.16, 2015, ISSN 1988-5946, Observatori: Centre d’Estudis Australians / 

Australian Studies Centre, Universitat de Barcelona 

 
 

59 
 

A strong and steady systole 

Providing the backbeat for my very own one-man band 

 

The daytime drama of life drowns out the sound down below 

The drumbeat lost in a cacophony  

Of chaos and chatter and cars 

 

It‟s only in the stillness of a stolen moment in the sun 

You‟ll remember to listen for the rhythm  

Steady staccato sans stutter 

Simple solitary sound 

 

A tropical heart hidden deep 

In a rainforest of lush undergrowth 

Ferns like fingers reach around the trunk 

Of a figure in celestial repose 

 

A canopy covers everything 

Sheltering ventricle vegetation, and other organs 

With their particular sounds 

But they are quieter in deference to the steady thumping 

Of a tropical heart 

Keeping the beat for everyone 

In this tiny little town 

 

So, 

When the sky goes dark and the night is still 

And the midge‟s mania subsides 

In the background, underneath it all 

You‟ll hear a sound that surrounds us all 

From within 

 

Deep down where no one goes 

Lies a tropical heart, beating on 

 

Annotation:  

The principle form of agriculture in Yeppoon on the Capricorn Coast in Queensland is 

pineapple growing, with the most common variety in Australia Smooth Leaf Cayenne, 

or „Smoothies‟. The reliance of the local economy on this hardy tropical fruit is 

explored in this poem, captured in the underlying theme of the „steady staccato‟ of a 

strong heart. Small towns and their industries are intertwined like blood vessels and 

ventricles around a major organ, and the language used to describe this relationship is 

often visceral: a small factory or plant can be referred to as the „lifeblood‟ of a town, 

and the townspeople come to depend on it, suffering as the industry might suffer 

various „health‟ setbacks.  



Coolabah, No.16, 2015, ISSN 1988-5946, Observatori: Centre d’Estudis Australians / 

Australian Studies Centre, Universitat de Barcelona 

 
 

60 
 

 

Yeppoon celebrates the pineapple industry with an annual event called Pinefest, with 

parade, fair and exhibitions drawing visitors since 1962 (Queensland Museum, 2013) 

from around the region and state, increasing tourism dollars, a newer source of income 

for the region.  

 

The eye of a needle 

 

The camels stride – 

a fine string  

through the trees. 

Cliffs rise red  

over the gap 

and the line of camels, 

thread themselves through 

one, two, three 

until they are gone. 

 

Voices echo 

from inside  

the gap: 

Aranda men calling  

camel commands  

in Arabic – 

the rocks speak  

as clouds lick at the cliff tops. 

 

The camels tread 

with ease 

through the country, 

and I am reminded  

strangely 

of rich men and the eye of a needle. 

 

Annotation: 

This poem arose from a line written by Bertha Strehlow. She wrote a great deal about 

the camels as she travelled with her husband TGH Strehlow across the desert, and as 

she got to know them wrote with increasing affection. „…a fine string through the trees‟ 

is from her article „Through Central Australia‟ (1940 p. 10). But as suggested by Gail 

Jones, the generation of a work doesn‟t often arise from a clearly marked out plan. 

Rather it comes instead „from the fragment, the trace, the vague or barest intuition. 

From scraps…‟ (1999 p. 314).  This poem arose in such a way.  

 

The phrase „a fine string…‟ took my mind to the domestic and the possibility that 

Bertha would have had to repair clothes (and their swag sheets when they got caught in 



Coolabah, No.16, 2015, ISSN 1988-5946, Observatori: Centre d’Estudis Australians / 

Australian Studies Centre, Universitat de Barcelona 

 
 

61 
 

mulga) in the isolation of the desert. My thought process then took me to the biblical 

reference of the eye of a needle.  Central Australia was being colonised at the time the 

story is set and Aboriginal people were being actively encouraged to give up their 

language as well as their spiritual beliefs. The glimpse is attained as Bertha hears 

Aranda men calling to the camels in Arabic. This moment has magic in its strangeness.  

 

 

Echoing and evoking the sense of longing 

 

 

The themes of place evoked in these poems resonate with a sense of nostalgia using a 

„language of a condition of special use‟ (Steiner, 2010 p.72). Steiner‟s position on 

language and the use of words captures the sense of a place in the sound of the words, 

echoing perhaps the sound of the landscape.  

 

This specialised language triggers emotion, pointing towards the „glimpse‟ (Heaney, 

1995 p. xv). The glimpse provides moments of revelation in the inspiration for the work 

and the distillation of emotion released through the reading of the poem, somewhere 

between „the unconscious and the never-really-known‟ (Hetherington, 2012). This is the 

poetry of „edge country‟, creating a sense of longing for what was, or what could be, 

within the place and the emotion of the place.  

 

We conclude this part of the discussion with a visual demonstration of Paul 

Hetherington‟s notions of poetic space using images of our respective places, and thus 

the focus of our work. 

 
Kemp Beach, Central Queensland – photo by Lynda Hawryluk 



Coolabah, No.16, 2015, ISSN 1988-5946, Observatori: Centre d’Estudis Australians / 

Australian Studies Centre, Universitat de Barcelona 

 
 

62 
 

 
 

The Fitzroy Delta from the air, Central Queensland – photo by Lynda Hawryluk 
 

 
 

Moon rise over creek, Northern Territory – photo by Leni Shilton 
 

 
 

On the crest of Mt Phillips, Northern Territory – photo by Leni Shilton 

 



Coolabah, No.16, 2015, ISSN 1988-5946, Observatori: Centre d’Estudis Australians / 

Australian Studies Centre, Universitat de Barcelona 

 
 

63 
 

 

The glimpse as affective resonance 

 

 

What one might experience by viewing the images of the places referred to in the 

proceeding writing is affective resonance. The effects of the glimpse can be examined 

in terms of affect theory (Tompkins, 1962) because the glimpse has a similar outcome 

of evoking response in the body, one experienced in its creation as well.  

 

In Affect Imagery Consciousness (1962), Tompkins describes nine discrete affects 

operating on a scale from positive to neutral to negative.  

 

 
 

 

The progression of these affects is seen bodily, often in facial expressions. 

 

Much of the writing referred to here makes connections with the positive end of the 

affective response scale, and in a very subtle way. Tompkins‟ affect theory 

acknowledged the innate nature of affect; our responses occur bodily, and often 

unconsciously. Evoking a feeling, a sensation of place in the reader is so too an innate 

reaction but it comes with the permission of the reader who is seeking to feel that which 

the poet felt and experienced. The experience provides a moment where the reader 

“react[s] innately to the expressed affect of others as if it were our own, and therefore 

enabled to know a great deal about the inner world of those others” (Nathanson 2008 p. 

5).  

 

Tompkins called this affective resonance – how humans respond to each other via the 

„transmission of affect‟ (Brennan, 2004). In writing, the experience of this is 

exemplified in the glimpse, which echoes back in a bodily expression to the reader. The 

poetry resonates in the reader, who is provided with a sense of the location being 



Coolabah, No.16, 2015, ISSN 1988-5946, Observatori: Centre d’Estudis Australians / 

Australian Studies Centre, Universitat de Barcelona 

 
 

64 
 

described; the scenery, atmosphere, the physical sensation of being there. Resonance is 

responsiveness and this responsiveness is often physical. 

 

Affect, Tompkins said, “makes good things better and bad things worse” (p.2) 

 

This echoes back to the moment of the glimpse. The glimpse provides a sense of 

synchronicity for the poet and reader alike. This is evoked in the way a poet like Vivian 

Smith responds to place in his work about Tasmania‟s rugged landscapes: 

 

Water colour country. Here the hills 

rot like rugs beneath enormous skies 

and all day long the shadows of the clouds 

stain the paddocks with their running dyes.  

… 

the hills breathing like a horse‟s flank 

with grasses combed and clean of snow. (Smith 2011p. 594) 

 

In these words we see the evocation of the glimpse, written as a moment in time that 

echoes through the mind, resonates with the body and into memory. The language in 

Smith‟s work here is sinister and evocative, beautiful yet alarming. In much the same 

way the discrete affects sit on a sliding scale, Smith acknowledges the dichotomy of the 

landscape, provoking a sense of dis-ease and discomfort that affects the writer and the 

reader alike.  

 

The glimpse evokes a feeling in the reader in a similar way to the function of 

Jacobson‟s Organ, as explained by Watson (1999). Jacobson‟s Organ is a little known 

cluster of cells in the nasal cavity, which acts as a kind of memory transmitter. This is 

what is working when an odour evokes powerful responses including associated 

memories. The effect can be a physical response such as retching or crying; involuntary 

actions that inhabit the body at an affective level. Affect theory provides us with an 

understanding of innate responses to stimulus virtually out of our control. 

 

How a writer provokes and stimulates this is with language, and with the effectiveness 

of description that brings a scene to life in more than just words. Stephen King explored 

this in the opening to his novella The Body (1982): 

 

The most important things are the hardest things to say. These are the 

things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them - words shrink 

things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than 

living size when they‟re brought out (Introduction, n.p). 

 

King describes here the frustration of not being able to capture something in words, or 

retell it to another so they have an understanding of its importance. The antithesis of this 

experience is the evocation of the glimpse.  

 



Coolabah, No.16, 2015, ISSN 1988-5946, Observatori: Centre d’Estudis Australians / 

Australian Studies Centre, Universitat de Barcelona 

 
 

65 
 

As posited by Tompkins, affective response is the innate reaction to an emotion, and in 

relation to our understanding of the glimpse, this can be evoked by a word or phrase. It 

is the job of the writer to provoke this response in the reader, to provide for them the 

sensation they experienced at the moment of realisation. To capture a scene and its 

physical presence is like watching a human face responding in the way it evokes an 

automatic and natural response, and our innate reflection of that back is the glimpse. So 

a place that makes a poet smile and pause, or take a deep sigh is captured in language 

that evokes those feelings in the reader. It allows them that glimpse of the moment in 

the reading of the work. The glimpse then is a bodily reaction to words as much as an 

evocation in words. It is a complementary relationship representing synchronicity with 

the poet and reader.   

 

Emily Dickinson describes this famously as equating to the most intense of physical 

sensations. She described it thus: „if I read a book [and] it makes my whole body so 

cold no fire can ever warm me I know that is poetry. I feel physically as if the top of my 

head were taken off, I know that is poetry‟ (Dickinson in Hirsch 1999 p. 7).  

 

The Australian poet Deb Westbury puts this in practical terms, explaining that „…the 

work is greater than its parts. Ideally it will cause the reader to feel something, to touch 

you, so that the reader is changed permanently by his/her encounter with the work‟ 

(2013). This is then the ultimate goal of the writer; the process of allowing the reader to 

see and feel what they did at the moment of the glimpse: a permanent change enacted 

upon the body and expressed in language and description. Poetry about place and 

landscape does this effectively, providing the words geographers couldn‟t find 

(Porteous, 1984). This corresponds to the ideas expressed by our colleagues in the field, 

of „empathetically shar[ing] the writers‟ sense of landscape‟ (Berry, 2013 p. 85) and 

„captur[ing] the essence of the places and landscapes‟ (Boyd, 2013 p. 99) in verse.  

 

 

Poetry examples: 

 

 

The culmination of ideas, exemplified in words evoking the sense of our respective 

places, our responses to them, and the sense of longing that the places evoke in us is 

demonstrated in a final selection of poems: 

 

The sky is darker at night. 

 

A balmy breeze blows through palm trees 

Grounded deep in their natural environment 

Half asleep watching faint lights flickering in the distance  

They might belong to a car, a house  

Or something you don‟t want to think about 

 

Every tree could be an abrupt ending to the journey home 



Coolabah, No.16, 2015, ISSN 1988-5946, Observatori: Centre d’Estudis Australians / 

Australian Studies Centre, Universitat de Barcelona 

 
 

66 
 

And every shadow beckons you closer towards the dark 

A thousand eyes line the roadside 

Watching and waiting for the next car to pass 

A kangaroo court of voyeurs, ready to pounce 

 

Driving along through endless inky night 

Belying a vast empty country; it‟s out there somewhere 

The car is cool and comfortable 

And gives a false sense of safety 

But it could all be over in seconds 

 

The sky is much darker at night 

Without the benefit of the reflected light 

Of a humming cityscape 

A different kind of city sits out there in the dark 

Hiding behind bushes, away from the headlights of an oncoming car 

 

Annotation: 

The night sky has long been a subject of wonder among poets and scientists alike. 

Writers from such divergent backgrounds as Lord Byron („Darkness‟, 1816), 

Wordsworth („The sun has long been set‟, 1804), Rilke („At the brink of night‟ trans. 

1949), Frost („Acquainted with the night‟, 1928) and Sexton (The starry night‟, 1981) 

have sought to capture the appearance and depth of darkness that night provides and 

inspires.  

 

DH Lawrence‟s „Grey Evening‟ (1916) acknowledges what science knows: that the 

night sky is more complex a range of colours than simple darkness. Far from there 

being an absolute shade of black to the human eye, the absence of light is in fact a shade 

known as eigengrau, or „intrinsic grey‟ (Blom, 2010 p.170). The sky in outback 

Australia looks darker at night due to the contrasting effect of stars, and the deeper one 

gets into isolated spaces, the darker this night becomes.  

 

The Bortle Dark-Sky Scale (2001) provides a range of locations and their suitability for 

dark sky viewing according to visibility of stars and interference from light pollution. A 

large city (Inner City Sky), full of reflected light and neon, will prevent the human eye 

from detecting stars and is considered the worst location for dark sky viewing. The best 

locations are of course far away from cities, with their floodlights and high-rise 

buildings. The further one gets, the better the opportunity to see colourful and clear 

zodiac symbols and constellations in full.  

 

Of course, the perception of the Australian Outback is that is a place with a dark heart; a 

place to be fearful of. From early depictions of the bush we see a reliance on imagery 

creating a sense of fear and distrust, which correlates with a pathological fear of the 

dark, scotophobia, a word derived from the Greek word for darkness. In pathological 

terms, Lyons (1985) says fear of the dark may not arise from being afraid of the absence 



Coolabah, No.16, 2015, ISSN 1988-5946, Observatori: Centre d’Estudis Australians / 

Australian Studies Centre, Universitat de Barcelona 

 
 

67 
 

of light but because „one does not know what may be out there in the dark‟ (p. 75).  

 

Dream Language 

 

The Language felt in the rocks, 

on the air through grey leaves. 

 

A land language I hear on my skin 

as it moves like a veil over my face.  

 

Sound that touches under skin  

like water seeping through sand, 

 

that birds know before it is sound. 

A scent cushioned on wind, on currents over hills,  

 

in cloud,  

in rain when it finds itself falling.  

 

The flick of a bird‟s wing,  

dust that falls as it turns. 

 

And light, ragged on the horizon  

brushed orange in the mountain‟s profile, 

 

a misted rainbow of colour;  

fading to dark, with dotted stars 

 

lanterns to guard the cold night.  

All sound, like a long held note. 

 

The language fades from my ears, 

but echoes loud in the land. 

 

I move through rock,  

creep in the dark, watch the night animals come.  

 

The dark a type of home,  

a tranquil breath  

 

of giving in,  

giving up, giving over.  

 

A small moment  

where all others wash off  



Coolabah, No.16, 2015, ISSN 1988-5946, Observatori: Centre d’Estudis Australians / 

Australian Studies Centre, Universitat de Barcelona 

 
 

68 
 

into dreams 

and I stop worrying for the first time (Shilton 2014). 

 

Annotation: 

Historian Paul Carter examines the association between „travelling and dreaming‟ as 

expressed by 20
th

 century explorers in Central Australia, in particular in the writing of 

Ernest Giles who named the Petermann Ranges. Bertha‟s dream state is explored by 

investigating the parallels in this imagined dream poem of Bertha‟s with Giles‟ writing: 

„Darkness began to creep over this solitary place…I coiled myself up under a bush and 

fell into one of those extraordinary waking dreams which occasionally descend upon 

imaginative mortals when we know that we are alive, and yet we think we are dead…At 

such a time the imagination can revel only in the marvelous, (sic) the mysterious, and 

the mythical.‟  

 

In his discussion of Giles‟ writing Carter states:  

 

… [with this reverie] the writer seeks to persuade us of the universality of 

his experience. Such transcendent moments are part of the explorer‟s 

credentials. They are an indispensable element, if the biography is to be 

complete (Carter 1987 pp. 84-5). 

 

 

Conclusion 

 

 

This paper has explored and described a relationship to and reading of the „glimpse‟, an 

evocation of place that provides an underlying philosophy inherent in the authors‟ work. 

It does this by way of example, through our own work and that of Australian poets who 

take as their inspiration the Australian landscape. Our position is informed by this 

demonstration of our work and the work of other Australian poets, who use the moment 

of becoming and knowing to better express their connection to place, and allow a reader 

this moment in their own space, obviating distance and location. In this way this paper 

and exercise demonstrates the experience Keats famously described in his 1891 letter; 

the process of „negative capability‟ and its usefulness for poets seeking to capture in 

words and mood the very essence of a place.  

 

 

Works Cited 

 

 

Arthur, J 2003 The Default country – A Lexical Cartography of Twentieth Century 

Australia, UNSW Press, pp. 1-3 

 

Attwood, B 2005 Telling the truth about Aboriginal History, A&U, Melbourne, pp. 

169-70 



Coolabah, No.16, 2015, ISSN 1988-5946, Observatori: Centre d’Estudis Australians / 

Australian Studies Centre, Universitat de Barcelona 

 
 

69 
 

  

Bell, D 1993 Daughter of the Dreaming, A&U, Melbourne 

 

Berry, M 2013 Being There: Poetic Landscapes in Coolabah, vol. 11  

www.ub.edu/dpfilsa/coola11marshaberry9.pdf  

 

Blom, JD 2010 A Dictionary of Hallucinations, Springer USA p. 170 

 

Bortle, J 2001 „The Bortle Dark-Sky Scale‟ in Sky and Telescope at 

http://media.skyandtelescope.com/documents/BortleDarkSkyScale.pdf  

 

Boyd, B 2013 (Hardly) Anyone listening? Writing silent geography in Coolabah, vol 11 

www.ub.edu/dpfilsa/coola11billboyd10.pdf  

 

Brennan, T 2004 The Transmission of Affect Cornell University Press, Ithaca New York 

 

Brookes, D 1991 The Arrente Landscape of Alice Springs, IAD Press, Alice Springs 

 

Brophy, K 2003 Explorations on Creative Writing, MUP, p. 222 

 

Darwin, C 1872 The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals John Murray, 

United Kingdom 

 

Dening, G 2006 „Performing Cross-Culturally‟ in Australasian Journal of American 

Studies, www.anzasa.arts.usyd.edu.au/a.j.a.s/Articles/2_06/Dening.pdf   

 

Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry 2013 Frequently asked questions 

about varieties of pineapples 

http://www.daff.qld.gov.au/plants/fruit-and-vegetables/fruit-and-nuts/pineapples/faqs-

about-pineapples/faqs-about-varieties-of-pineapple 

 

Carter, P 1987 The Road to Botany Bay, Faber & Faber, London, pp. 77-8 

 

Cook, P 2012 Mudmaps and Memories: An Introduction to The Capricorn Coast and its 

History CCHS, Yeppoon  

 

Flinders, M 1814 A Voyage to Terra Australis: Undertaken for the Purpose of 

Completing the Discovery of that Vast Country, and Prosecuted in the Years 

1801, 1802, and 1803, in His Majesty's Ship the Investigator G and W Nicol, 

United Kingdom 

 

Frost R, 1928 „Acquainted with the Night‟ in The Poetry of Robert Frost, Henry Holt 

and Co, USA  

 

Gislason, K 2013 „Author-in-waiting – Self portrait of Peter Goldsworthy‟, review of 

%22http:/
http://media.skyandtelescope.com/documents/BortleDarkSkyScale.pdf
http://www.ub.edu/dpfilsa/coola11bill
http://www.anzasa.arts.usyd.edu.au/a.j.a.s/Articles/2_06/Dening.pdf
http://www.daff.qld.gov.au/plants/fruit-and-vegetables/fruit-and-nuts/pineapples/faqs-about-pineapples/faqs-about-varieties-of-pinea
http://www.daff.qld.gov.au/plants/fruit-and-vegetables/fruit-and-nuts/pineapples/faqs-about-pineapples/faqs-about-varieties-of-pinea


Coolabah, No.16, 2015, ISSN 1988-5946, Observatori: Centre d’Estudis Australians / 

Australian Studies Centre, Universitat de Barcelona 

 
 

70 
 

His stupid Boyhood: a memoir, in ABR, December 2013-January 2014, No. 357, 

p. 16 

 

Gibson, R 1996 in Nourishing Terrains: Australian Aboriginal views of landscape and 

wilderness, Eds Deborah Bird Rose, Australia Heritage Commission, Canberra, 

p. 18 

  

Gilbert, E 2009 „Your elusive creative genius‟, 

http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html Feb 2009, (viewed 

August 2013) 

 

Gill. N 005 „Transcending nostalgia: pastoralist memory and staking a claim in the 

land‟, in Dislocation the Frontier, Eds. D. Bird Rose & R. Davis, ANU EPress, 

Canberra, pp. 78-9 

 

Goldberg, N 1990 Wild Mind – Living the Writer’s Life, Bantam Books, NY  

 

Gordon, G (Lord Byron) 1816 „Darkness‟ in The Norton Anthology of English 

Literature 2006 Ed. Stephen Greenblatt 8th ed. Vol. D. W W Norton and 

Company, New York, pp. 614-6 

 

Griffiths T 1996 Hunters and Collectors The Antiquarian Imagination in Australia, 

Cambridge University Press UK Chapter 8 

 

Hannaford,K2004 „Wetland Sonnets‟  

http://kristinhannaford.com/ws/intertidal_zone_text_only.html  

 

Harrison, M 2007 Who wants to create Australia? Halstead Press, Sydney, pp. 55 & 59 

 

Heaney, S 1995 The Redress of Poetry, Faber and Faber, London, p. xv 

 

Hetherington, P 2012 „Dancing in the open: the encounter with poetry and eruptions of 

the unknown‟ in Encounters: refereed proceedings of the 17
th
 annual AAWP 

conference http://aawp.org.au/files/Hetherington_1.pdf (accessed 2nd August 

2013) 

 

Hill, B 2001 Inland Sea, Salt Publishing, Cambridge  

 

Hirsch, E 1999 How to read a poem and fall in love with poetry, Harcourt Harvest 

Books, NY  

 

Jones, G 1999 „Touch‟, in Below the Waterline, ed. Garry Disher, Flamingo Books, 

Sydney, p. 314 

 

http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html
http://kristinhannaford.com/ws/intertidal_zone_text_only.html


Coolabah, No.16, 2015, ISSN 1988-5946, Observatori: Centre d’Estudis Australians / 

Australian Studies Centre, Universitat de Barcelona 

 
 

71 
 

Keats, J 1891 The Letters of John Keats to his family and friends, Ed. Sidney Colvin, 

MacMillan & Co., London, p. 48 

 

Kimber, R 1990 „The end of the bad old days: European settlement in Central Australia, 

1871-1894‟, The fifth Eric Johnston Lecture, State Library of the Northern 

Territory, 9
th
 November 1990 

 

King, S 1982 The Body in Different Seasons Viking, New York 

 

Lawrence, A 2012 „Field guide‟, in TEXT Special Issue: Creative Writing as Research 

II, Brien D and Krauth, N (eds) October 2012 

http://www.textjournal.com.au/speciss/issue15/Lawrence.pdf (assessed 13th 

November 2013)  

 

Lea, B 2001 Flight animals, UQP, Brisbane, p. 10 

 

Lee, T 2013 „Poetry as a prompt to think and feel through sounds‟, Bridges to Higher 

Education, English Video Conference Series, 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhYnCGyHLhg, (accessed 8
th
 August 2013) 

 

Lopez, B 1999 'Learning to See', in About this Life, Vintage Books NY, pp. 223-39 

 

Lyons, W 1985 Emotion Cambridge University Press, UK p. 75 

 

Magee, P 2009 „Is poetry research?‟ in TEXT Volume 13 No 2 Brien D and Krauth, N 

(eds) October 2009 http://www.textjournal.com.au/oct09/magee.htm (accessed 

2nd August 2013)  

 

Mooney, M 2005 For the dry country - writing and drawings from the Centre, with 

Sally Mumford, ed Jan Owens, Ptilotus Press, Alice Springs, p. 57 

 

Murray, L 2006 „Three Interiors‟ in Collected Poems, Black Inc. Melbourne 

 

Nungarrayi, M 1995 „Following the tracks of our ancestors: living from the country‟, in 

Warlpiri Women’s Voices Our Lives Our History, ed P. Vaarzon-Morel, IAD 

Press, Alice Springs, pp. 3-4 

 

Noonuccal, O 1966 „The Past‟ in The Dawn is at Hand, Jacaranda Wiley Australia 

 

O‟Connor, P 1992 Some guides to the Irish scene, Irish Landscape series no. 2, Oireacht 

na Mumhan Books, Newcastle West, Co. Limerick, p. 8 

 

Oliver, M 1994 A Poetry Handbook, Harvest, New York, p. 80 

 

Parini, J 2008 Why Poetry Matters, Yale University Press, London, pp. x-xi 

http://www.textjournal.com.au/speciss/issue15/Lawrence.pdf
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhYnCGyHLhg
http://www.textjournal.com.au/oct09/magee.htm


Coolabah, No.16, 2015, ISSN 1988-5946, Observatori: Centre d’Estudis Australians / 

Australian Studies Centre, Universitat de Barcelona 

 
 

72 
 

 

Porteous, J.D. 1984 Putting Descartes before dehors. Transactions of the Institute of 

British Geographers, N.S.9, 372-373.  

 

Pretty, R 2001 Creating Poetry, Five Islands Press, Wollongong, p. 3 

 

Queensland Museum, 2013 „Collecting Queensland Festivals‟ 

http://www.qm.qld.gov.au/microsites/collecting-queensland-festivals/festivals-

on-display/pineapple-festival-display.html  

 

Rilke, R M (trans. 1949 Burnham, J) „At the brink of night‟ at 

http://www.blackcatpoems.com/r/at_the_brink_of_night.html  

 

Rubuntja, W & Green, J 2002 The town grew up dancing – the life and art of Wenten 

Rubuntja, Jukurrpa Books, IAD Press, Alice Springs, p. 7  

 

San Roque, C & Santospirito, J 2013 The Long Weekend in Alice Springs, Sankessto 

Publications, Hobart 

 

Sexton, A 1981 „The Starry Night‟ in The Complete Poems of Anne Sexton Houghton 

Mifflin, Boston 

 

Shilton, L 2014 „Dream Language‟, in „Capturing the Glimpse: revelations on creative 

manoeuvres‟, in The Creative Manoeuvres: Making, Saying, Being Papers – The 

Refereed Proceedings Of The 18th Conference Of The Australasian Association 

Of Writing Programs, 2013, L. Hawryluk & L. Shilton, University of Canberra, 

25-27
th

 November 2013 

http://www.aawp.org.au/the_creative_manoeuvres_making_saying_being_paper

s 

 

Shilton, L 2013 „The eye of the needle‟, in Swamp Journal, Edition 13 

http://www.swampwriting.com October 2013 

 

Smith, V 2011 „Tasmania‟, in Australian Poetry since 1788, eds Geoffrey Lehmann & 

Robert Gray, UNSW Press, Sydney, p. 594 

 

Spencer, B & Gillen FJ 1927 The Aranta, MacMillan & Co, London 

 

Steel, P 2012 Braiding the voices: Essays in Poetry, John Leonard Press, Melbourne, p. 

177 

 

Steiner, G 2010 Language and Silence, ebook (first published 1958), Faber and Faber, 

London, p. 72 

http://www.qm.qld.gov.au/microsites/
http://www.qm.qld.gov.au/microsites/
http://www.blackcatpoems.com/r/at_the_brink_of_night.html
http://www.aawp.org.au/the_creative_manoeuvres_making_saying_being_papers
http://www.aawp.org.au/the_creative_manoeuvres_making_saying_being_papers
http://www.swampwriting.com/


Coolabah, No.16, 2015, ISSN 1988-5946, Observatori: Centre d’Estudis Australians / 

Australian Studies Centre, Universitat de Barcelona 

 
 

73 
 

 

Strehlow, B 1940 „Through Central Australia‟, in Walkabout, Vol. 6, No. 1, August 

1940, p. 10 

 

Strehlow, TGH 1971 Songs of Central Australia, Angus & Robertson, Sydney 

 

Nathanson, D in Tomkins, S (1962, reprinted 2008) Affect Imagery Consciousness: The 

Positive Affects: Prologue (Vol. 1), New York: Springer 

 

Tredinnick, M 2003 A Place on Earth, University of Nebraska Press, Canada 

 

Turner, M K & McDonald, B 2010 Iwenhe Tyerrtye: What it means to be an Aboriginal 

person, IAD Press, Alice Springs  

 

Watkins, L 1999 Jacobson‟s Organ and the Remarkable Nature of Smell W W Norton 

& Company Incorporated New York 

 

Westbury, D 2013 „Report on Publisher‟s Fellowship for Poetry at Varuna 2013‟, 

http://www.varuna.com.au/varuna/images/PDFs/Publishers%20Fellowship%20p

oetry%20report%202013%20PUBLIC.pdf (viewed 2
nd

 December 2013) 

 

Westbury, D 2002 Flying Blind, Brandl & Schlesinger, Blackheath, p. 18 

 

Wordsworth, W 1888 The Complete Poetical Works by William Wordsworth, with an 

introduction by John Morley, Macmillan, London  

 

Wright, J 1994 „Dust‟, in Judith Wright Collected Poems, A&R, Sydney, pp. 23-4 

 

 

Dr Lynda Hawryluk is a Senior Lecturer in Writing at Southern Cross University where 

she is the Course Coordinator of the Associate Degree of Creative Writing. Lynda has 

facilitated writing workshops in regional Queensland and Canada. She is the Chair of the 

Australasian Association of Writing Programs AAWP and has been published in a variety 

of academic and creative publications. 

 

Leni Shilton is an award winning poet and writer of short creative non-fiction. Her work 

is published widely in anthologies and journals and broadcast on PoeticA. Leni is a PhD 

candidate at Southern Cross University. 

 

 

http://www.varuna.com.au/varuna/images/PDFs/Publisher
http://www.varuna.com.au/varuna/images/PDFs/Publisher