Cirrus@Austlit

This first-ever collection of Australian poet Judith Wright's nonfiction is a compelling portrait of a prescient voice on modern Australia.

'Judith Wright (1915-2000) is one of the best-known Australian poets of her generation. Born into a pioneering bush family, her commitments to environmental protection, history writing and obtaining recognition for First Nations people drew her in new directions and assumed a major role in her life. She was the first president of the Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland, a founder of the Australian Conservation Foundation and a member of the Aboriginal Treaty Commission.

'This selection of her nonfiction, the first of its kind, brings together essays, speeches, family history, correspondence, memoir and criticism to reveal the personal and philosophical threads that bind together her work and life. It makes plain the shifts and transformations in her thinking, and the female friendships - in particular, with writer and activist Oodgeroo Noonuccal - that opened her to new perspectives and connections.

'This addition to the Australian Thinkers series shows what happens when a poet talks about a nation. It reveals a way of thinking about Australia - its land, history and culture - that draws on the best of human possibility.'  (Publication summary) 

A musical setting to a short poem by Judth Wright, in which she explores the irony of closeness where however close our touch or intimate our speech, silences, spaces reach most deep, and will not close.'

With Love and Fury is a series of musical settings to ten poems by Judith Wright. The sequence was conceived as both an album and a touring concert.

'The musical settings enhance the turmoil of conflict and destruction that bursts out of Wright’s words. The song cycle is dark and intense. The narrative alludes to a profound concern for the environment and our relationship with the land and its people – issues that Judith Wright felt strongly about during her life as a conservationist and an Aboriginal rights activist' (Daniela Kaleva. Australian Stage 3 May 2016).

The poems that comprise Love and Fury (in album order) are:

• 1. 'Late Spring' (Elena Kats-Chernin)
• 2. 'To a Child' (David Hirschfelder)
• 3. 'Sonnet for Christmas' (Paul Dean)
• 4. 'After the Visitors' (Andrew Ford)
• 5. 'The Surfer' (Katie Noonan)
• 6. 'Night after Bushfire' (Iain Grandage)
• 7. 'The Company of Lovers' (Paul Grabowsky)
• 8. 'Failure of Communication' (John Rodgers)
• 9. 'The Slope' (Carl Vine)
• 10. 'Metho Drinker' (Richard Tognetti)

NB: The composer is indicated in brackets