Poets, Truths, and Australia

The contemporary has a complicated, often unhappy, relationship with the nation. This need not be the case. The nation, particularly in its Australian context, can offer the poet significant resources, and a space for a radicalized poetics. But how do we think about this space? This chapter offers both an argument for a return to a national poetry, and a systematization of the existing modes of relation between poetry and the nation in Australia.