'What kind of appetite does poetry have for creating new discourses about the nation? This essay will ask if poetry can re-imagine and re-write what are often oppressive and exclusionary national discourses, asking how - historically and in contemporary work - poetry has been concerned with national forms of belonging and unbelonging. Further, the essay will ask whether Australian poetry is able to generate new and even hopeful language in which to think about the nation.' (Author's introduction)