Kangaroo single work   poetry   "Kangaroo! Kangaroo!"
Issue Details: First known date: 1819... 1819 Kangaroo
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Notes

  • Epigraph: 'mixtumque genus, prolesque biformis.' - VIRGIL, Aeneid VI

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Alternative title: The Kangaroo
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon First Fruits of Australian Poetry Barron Field , Sydney : George Howe , 1819 Z824535 1819 selected work poetry Sydney : George Howe , 1819
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon First Fruits of Australian Poetry Barron Field , Sydney : George Howe , 1819 Z824535 1819 selected work poetry Sydney : R. Howe , 1823
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Geographical Memoirs on New South Wales Barron Field (editor), London : John Murray , 1825 Z1890035 1825 anthology prose poetry diary travel London : John Murray , 1825 pg. 494-496
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon The Gleaner 26 April 1827 Z1636075 1827 periodical issue 1827 pg. 4
    Note: With title: The Kangaroo
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Once a Month vol. 1 no. 4 15 October 1884 Z634986 1884 periodical issue 1884 pg. 275
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon The Lone Hand vol. 16 no. 93 (n.s. vol.3 no.2) January 1915 Z592139 1915 periodical issue 1915 pg. 105
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon First Fruits of Australian Poetry Barron Field , Sydney : George Howe , 1819 Z824535 1819 selected work poetry Sydney : Barn on the Hill Press , 1941 pg. 9-11
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon An Animal Anthology Hal Missingham , Sydney : Shepherd Press , 1948 Z1293870 1948 anthology poetry prose Sydney : Shepherd Press , 1948 pg. 8
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon The Legend of the Coming of the First Kangaroo Lindsay A. Dane , Barron Field , Caulfield : Truesdell Press , 1948 Z1479288 1948 selected work poetry short story Indigenous story This small book contains Barron Field's The Kangaroo and a retelling by Lindsay Dane of a legend of the coming of the kangaroo attributed to the 'first Autochthonous inhabitants of Australia, particularly those of the South Eastern tribes' of the McDonnell ranges area. Printed to commemmorate Australia Day 1948. Caulfield : Truesdell Press , 1948
    Note: With title: The Kangaroo
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Bards in the Wilderness : Australian Colonial Poetry to 1920 Adrian Mitchell (editor), Brian Elliott (editor), Melbourne : Nelson , 1970 Z429552 1970 anthology poetry Melbourne : Nelson , 1970 pg. 17-18
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    y separately published work icon A Treasury of Colonial Poetry Milsons Point : Currawong , 1982 Z363730 1982 anthology poetry Milsons Point : Currawong , 1982 pg. 123-124
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    y separately published work icon The New Oxford Book of Australian Verse Les Murray (editor), Melbourne : Oxford University Press , 1986 Z427532 1986 anthology poetry Melbourne : Oxford University Press , 1986 pg. 6-7
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon The New Oxford Book of Australian Verse Les Murray (editor), Melbourne : Oxford University Press , 1986 Z427532 1986 anthology poetry Melbourne : Oxford University Press , 1986 pg. 6-7
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Two Centuries of Australian Poetry Mark O'Connor (editor), Melbourne : Oxford University Press , 1988 Z322247 1988 anthology poetry criticism Contains poems grouped into 18 thematic sections (19 in 2nd. ed.) ; each section has an introduction, notes and suggestions for study activities and further study. Biographical notes on authors and indexes also included. Melbourne : Oxford University Press , 1988 pg. 6-7
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon The Poet's Discovery : Nineteenth Century Australia in Verse Richard Douglas Jordan (editor), Peter Pierce (editor), Carlton : Melbourne University Press , 1990 Z299524 1990 anthology poetry biography Carlton : Melbourne University Press , 1990 pg. 75-76
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon First Fruits of Australian Poetry Barron Field , Sydney : George Howe , 1819 Z824535 1819 selected work poetry Cook : Mulini Press , 1990 pg. 11-14
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon The Penguin Book of 19th Century Australian Literature Michael Ackland (editor), Ringwood : Penguin , 1993 Z203182 1993 anthology short story poetry extract prose criticism biography humour satire crime Ringwood : Penguin , 1993 pg. 14-15
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon The New Oxford Book of Australian Verse Les Murray (editor), Melbourne : Oxford University Press , 1986 Z427532 1986 anthology poetry South Melbourne : Oxford University Press , 1996 pg. 6-7
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Classic Australian Verse Maggie Pinkney (editor), Noble Park : Five Mile Press , 2001 Z864790 2001 anthology poetry Noble Park : Five Mile Press , 2001 pg. 26-28
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Our Country : Classic Australian Poetry : From the Colonial Ballads to Paterson & Lawson Michael Cook (editor), Seven Hills : Little Hills Press , 2004 Z1266972 2004 anthology poetry Seven Hills : Little Hills Press , 2004 pg. 66-67
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Australian Poetry Library APRIL; APL; The Australian Poetry Resources Internet Library John Tranter , Sydney : 2004- Z1368099 2004- website

    'The Australian Poetry Library (APL) aims to promote a greater appreciation and understanding of Australian poetry by providing access to a wide range of poetic texts as well as to critical and contextual material relating to them, including interviews, photographs and audio/visual recordings.

    This website currently contains over 42,000 poems, representing the work of more than 170 Australian poets. All the poems are fully searchable, and may be accessed and read freely on the World Wide Web. Readers wishing to download and print poems may do so for a small fee, part of which is returned to the poets via CAL, the Copyright Agency Limited. Teachers, students and readers of Australian poetry can also create personalised anthologies, which can be purchased and downloaded. Print on demand versions will be availabe from Sydney University Press in the near future.

    It is hoped that the APL will encourage teachers to use more Australian material in their English classes, as well as making Australian poetry much more available to readers in remote and regional areas and overseas. It will also help Australian poets, not only by developing new audiences for their work but by allowing them to receive payment for material still in copyright, thus solving the major problem associated with making this material accessible on the Internet.

    The Australian Poetry Library is a joint initiative of the University of Sydney and the Copyright Agency Limited (CAL). Begun in 2004 with a prototype site developed by leading Australian poet John Tranter, the project has been funded by a major Linkage Grant from the Australian Research Council (ARC), CAL and the University of Sydney Library. A team of researchers from the University of Sydney, led by Professor Elizabeth Webby and John Tranter, in association with CAL, have developed the Australian Poetry Library as a permanent and wide-ranging Internet archive of Australian poetry resources.' Source: www.poetrylibrary.edu.au (Sighted 30/05/2011).

    Sydney : 2004-
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Two Centuries of Australian Poetry Kathrine Bell (editor), Smithfield : Gary Allen , 2007 Z1472336 2007 anthology poetry Smithfield : Gary Allen , 2007 pg. 14-15
    Note: With title: The Kangaroo
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon An Anthology of Australian Poetry to 1920 John Kinsella (editor), Nedlands : University of Western Australia Library , 2007 Z1908582 2007 anthology poetry column prose Nedlands : University of Western Australia Library , 2007 pg. 51-52
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon The Penguin Anthology of Australian Poetry John Kinsella (editor), Camberwell : Penguin , 2009 Z1553543 2009 anthology poetry (taught in 16 units)

    'This is a comprehensive survey of Australian poetic achievement, ranging from early colonial and indigenous verse to contemporary work, from the major poets to those who deserve to be better recognised.' (Provided by the publisher).

    Camberwell : Penguin , 2009
    pg. 26-28
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature Nicholas Jose (editor), Kerryn Goldsworthy (editor), Anita Heiss (editor), David McCooey (editor), Peter Minter (editor), Nicole Moore (editor), Elizabeth Webby (editor), Crows Nest : Allen and Unwin , 2009 Z1590615 2009 anthology correspondence diary drama essay extract poetry prose short story (taught in 23 units)

    'Some of the best, most significant writing produced in Australia over more than two centuries is gathered in this landmark anthology. Covering all genres - from fiction, poetry and drama to diaries, letters, essays and speeches - the anthology maps the development of one of the great literatures in English in all its energy and variety.

    'The writing reflects the diverse experiences of Australians in their encounter with their extraordinary environment and with themselves. This is literature of struggle, conflict and creative survival. It is literature of lives lived at the extremes, of frontiers between cultures, of new dimensions of experience, where imagination expands.

    'This rich, informative and entertaining collection charts the formation of an Australian voice that draws inventively on Indigenous words, migrant speech and slang, with a cheeky, subversive humour always to the fore. For the first time, Aboriginal writings are interleaved with other English-language writings throughout - from Bennelong's 1796 letter to the contemporary flowering of Indigenous fiction and poetry - setting up an exchange that reveals Australian history in stark new ways.

    'From vivid settler accounts to haunting gothic tales, from raw protest to feisty urban satire and playful literary experiment, from passionate love poetry to moving memoir, the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature reflects the creative eloquence of a society.

    'Chosen by a team of expert editors, who have provided illuminating essays about their selections, and with more than 500 works from over 300 authors, it is an authoritative survey and a rich world of reading to be enjoyed.' (Publisher's blurb)

    Allen and Unwin have a YouTube channel with a number of useful videos on the Anthology.

    Crows Nest : Allen and Unwin , 2009
    pg. 66-67
    Note: With title: The Kangaroo

Works about this Work

Above and Below : Sublime and Gothic Relations in Nineteenth-Century Australian Poetry Michael Farrell , 2024 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Cambridge Companion to Australian Poetry 2024; (p. 73-88)

‘This chapter considers how nineteenth-century poetry in Australia adapted European conceptualisations of the sublime and the gothic to articulate a literal inability to settle on the land. It argues that settler poetry has a difficulty with being grounded: its representations have a tendency to hover, sublimely, above the surface of the earth; or, if forced under, they refuse to simply die: but live on, as gothic, revenant, voices. It draws on popular and canonical examples like A. B. (Banjo) Paterson’s “The Man from Snowy River” and “Waltzing Matilda,” Adam Lindsay Gordon’s “The Sick Stockrider,” and Mary Gilmore’s “Old Botany Bay,” as well as examples that have been sourced from historical archives.’

Source: Abstract. 

‘Deep Hanging Out’ : Native Species Images and Affective Labour 2017 single work
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 17 no. 1 2017;

'This paper investigates the affective labour done by, specifically, native species images in Australian poetry, using Judith Wright's bird poems, and various poems about kangaroos as example. It uses the anthropological term, "deep hanging out", borrowed from an article about fashion models, to extend the idea of affective labour, and to measure poems' attentions to birds and animals, and their relation to iconising as the work of nationalism. It is concerned with cultural capital, and Canberra, and the human empire.'  (Publication abstract)

New Cultural Landscapes : Australian Narratives in Literature and Film Eduardo Marks de Marques , Anelise R. Corseuil , 2016 single work criticism
— Appears in: Ilha Do Desterro : A Journal of English Language , vol. 69 no. 2 2016;
'Australia. Terra Australis Incognita. Even before its official finding by Captain James Cook in 1770, the “land down under” already circulated in the European imagination. The giant mass of land necessary to balance a flat Earth (as antipodal to Europe) could only be home to a great many monstrous fauna and flora, as it was also the cultural counterpart to Europe. However, giant one-eyed monsters and sea serpents were not found by Captain Cook upon his arrival on Botany Bay, now part of Sydney. By declaring the land terra nullius, Cook ignored the many Aboriginal communities that had lived in Australia for over 75,000 years and such act has given way to one of the core elements in the development of Australian culture and history: the relationship between whites and Aborigines in the development of the nation.' (Introduction)
Australia - the Space that Is Not One : A Literary Approximation Gerhard Stilz , 2007 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australia : Making Space Meaningful 2007; (p. 27-43)
'Some dozen years ago, I rented a caravan in Adelaide for our family. It has a solid, glittering roo-bar in front and a prison-like wire-grating on the windscreen, fragmenting our view of the wide landscape into little safe squares. When we picked up that impressive vehicle, the rental manager routinely cautioned us that we should by all means stay on sealed roads, and he asked, just to make sure, "Are you going anywhere north of Port Augusta?" - "Yes," we said, "we would like to travel up to Alice and the Red Centre." - "Stuart Highway," he said, "but watch out, there's everything different there, you can get lost in no time, and you never know..." - "Know what?" we were about to ask, but that seemed too much of a sophistry in exchange for the goodly advise given by this good man, who did not look like a philosopher . Though a philosopher of sorts he may have been, following the thought-lines laid out through centuries of coping with dark and ill-defined spaces.' (Author's abstract)
Australia - the Space that Is Not One : A Literary Approximation Gerhard Stilz , 2007 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australia : Making Space Meaningful 2007; (p. 27-43)
'Some dozen years ago, I rented a caravan in Adelaide for our family. It has a solid, glittering roo-bar in front and a prison-like wire-grating on the windscreen, fragmenting our view of the wide landscape into little safe squares. When we picked up that impressive vehicle, the rental manager routinely cautioned us that we should by all means stay on sealed roads, and he asked, just to make sure, "Are you going anywhere north of Port Augusta?" - "Yes," we said, "we would like to travel up to Alice and the Red Centre." - "Stuart Highway," he said, "but watch out, there's everything different there, you can get lost in no time, and you never know..." - "Know what?" we were about to ask, but that seemed too much of a sophistry in exchange for the goodly advise given by this good man, who did not look like a philosopher . Though a philosopher of sorts he may have been, following the thought-lines laid out through centuries of coping with dark and ill-defined spaces.' (Author's abstract)
New Cultural Landscapes : Australian Narratives in Literature and Film Eduardo Marks de Marques , Anelise R. Corseuil , 2016 single work criticism
— Appears in: Ilha Do Desterro : A Journal of English Language , vol. 69 no. 2 2016;
'Australia. Terra Australis Incognita. Even before its official finding by Captain James Cook in 1770, the “land down under” already circulated in the European imagination. The giant mass of land necessary to balance a flat Earth (as antipodal to Europe) could only be home to a great many monstrous fauna and flora, as it was also the cultural counterpart to Europe. However, giant one-eyed monsters and sea serpents were not found by Captain Cook upon his arrival on Botany Bay, now part of Sydney. By declaring the land terra nullius, Cook ignored the many Aboriginal communities that had lived in Australia for over 75,000 years and such act has given way to one of the core elements in the development of Australian culture and history: the relationship between whites and Aborigines in the development of the nation.' (Introduction)
‘Deep Hanging Out’ : Native Species Images and Affective Labour 2017 single work
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 17 no. 1 2017;

'This paper investigates the affective labour done by, specifically, native species images in Australian poetry, using Judith Wright's bird poems, and various poems about kangaroos as example. It uses the anthropological term, "deep hanging out", borrowed from an article about fashion models, to extend the idea of affective labour, and to measure poems' attentions to birds and animals, and their relation to iconising as the work of nationalism. It is concerned with cultural capital, and Canberra, and the human empire.'  (Publication abstract)

Above and Below : Sublime and Gothic Relations in Nineteenth-Century Australian Poetry Michael Farrell , 2024 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Cambridge Companion to Australian Poetry 2024; (p. 73-88)

‘This chapter considers how nineteenth-century poetry in Australia adapted European conceptualisations of the sublime and the gothic to articulate a literal inability to settle on the land. It argues that settler poetry has a difficulty with being grounded: its representations have a tendency to hover, sublimely, above the surface of the earth; or, if forced under, they refuse to simply die: but live on, as gothic, revenant, voices. It draws on popular and canonical examples like A. B. (Banjo) Paterson’s “The Man from Snowy River” and “Waltzing Matilda,” Adam Lindsay Gordon’s “The Sick Stockrider,” and Mary Gilmore’s “Old Botany Bay,” as well as examples that have been sourced from historical archives.’

Source: Abstract. 

Last amended 13 Nov 2013 13:20:43
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