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The Land's Meaning single work   poetry   "The love of man is a weed of the waste places."
First known date: 1962 Issue Details: First known date: 1962... 1962 The Land's Meaning
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Notes

  • Dedication: For Sidney Nolan

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Australian Poetry 1962 Geoffrey Dutton (editor), Sydney : Angus and Robertson , 1962 Z403372 1962 anthology poetry Sydney : Angus and Robertson , 1962 pg. 13-14
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Outrider : Poems, 1956-1962 Randolph Stow , Sidney Nolan (illustrator), London : MacDonald , 1962 Z320267 1962 selected work poetry London : MacDonald , 1962 pg. 20-21
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Australian Letters vol. 5 no. 2 December 1962 Z594155 1962 periodical issue 1962 pg. 4
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Poems from 'The Outrider' and Other Poems Randolph Stow , Adelaide : Australian Letters , 1963 Z320367 1962 selected work poetry Adelaide : Australian Letters , 1963 pg. 4
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon The Vital Decade : Ten Years of Australian Art and Letters Geoffrey Dutton (editor), Max Harris (editor), Melbourne : Sun Books Australian Letters , 1968 Z402644 1968 anthology criticism poetry short story prose Melbourne : Sun Books Australian Letters , 1968 pg. 80-83
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon A Book of Australian Verse Judith Wright (editor), Melbourne : Oxford University Press , 1956 Z565053 1956 anthology poetry Melbourne : Oxford University Press , 1968 pg. 282-283
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Poetry from Australia : Judith Wright, William Hart-Smith, Randolph Stow Howard Sergeant (editor), Oxford : Pergamon Press , 1969 Z187906 1969 anthology poetry Oxford : Pergamon Press , 1969 pg. 72-73
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon A Counterfeit Silence : Selected Poems Randolph Stow , Sydney : Angus and Robertson , 1969 Z316341 1969 selected work poetry Sydney : Angus and Robertson , 1969 pg. 36
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Twelve Poets, 1950-1970 12 Poets, 1950-1970 Alexander Craig (editor), Milton : Jacaranda Press , 1971 Z77157 1971 anthology poetry Milton : Jacaranda Press , 1971 pg. 170-171
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon The Land's Meaning L. M. Hannan (editor), B. A. Breen (editor), South Melbourne : Macmillan Australia , 1973 Z873720 1973 anthology poetry South Melbourne : Macmillan Australia , 1973 pg. 8
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Australian Verse from 1805 : A Continuum Geoffrey Dutton (editor), Adelaide : Rigby , 1976 Z399014 1976 anthology Adelaide : Rigby , 1976 pg. 269-270
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Wide Domain : Western Australian Themes and Images Bruce Bennett (editor), William Grono (editor), Sydney : Angus and Robertson , 1979 Z37247 1979 anthology correspondence poetry drama short story Sydney : Angus and Robertson , 1979 pg. 19
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon My Country : Australian Poetry and Short Stories, Two Hundred Years Leonie Kramer (editor), Sydney : Lansdowne , 1985 Z1067493 1985 anthology poetry short story Sydney : Lansdowne , 1985 pg. 339
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Margins : A West Coast Selection of Poetry 1829-1988 William Grono (editor), Fremantle : Fremantle Press , 1988 Z141535 1988 anthology poetry Fremantle : Fremantle Press , 1988 pg. 281-282
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Randolph Stow : Visitants, Episodes from Other Novels, Poems, Stories, Interviews, and Essays Randolph Stow , Anthony J. Hassall (editor), St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1990 Z54227 1990 selected work novel poetry extract short story prose interview criticism St Lucia : University of Queensland Press , 1990 pg. 196-197
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Australian Poetry in the Twentieth Century Robert Gray (editor), Geoffrey Lehmann (editor), Port Melbourne : Heinemann , 1991 Z27032 1991 anthology poetry Port Melbourne : Heinemann , 1991 pg. 275-276
  • 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. 247-248
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon The Puncher & Wattmann Anthology of Australian Poetry John Leonard (editor), Glebe : Puncher and Wattmann , 2009 Z1674214 2009 anthology poetry (taught in 16 units) Glebe : Puncher and Wattmann , 2009 pg. 166
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Antipodes : Poetic Responses Margaret Bradstock (editor), Putney : Phoenix Education , 2011 Z1760960 2011 anthology poetry extract Antipodes, representing poets born between 1790 and 1983, provides a wonderful introduction to the changing views of Australia and its history over the past two hundred years as well as to the excellent poetry that is part of our heritage. -- Emeritus Professor Elizabeth Webby (from the Foreword) Putney : Phoenix Education , 2011 pg. 52
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Australian Poetry Since 1788 Geoffrey Lehmann (editor), Robert Gray (editor), Sydney : University of New South Wales Press , 2011 Z1803846 2011 anthology poetry (taught in 1 units) 'A good poem is one that the world can’t forget or is delighted to rediscover. This landmark anthology of Australian poetry, edited by two of Australia’s foremost poets, Geoffrey Lehmann and Robert Gray, contains such poems. It is the first of its kind for Australia and promises to become a classic. Included here are Australia’s major poets, and lesser-known but equally affecting ones, and all manifestations of Australian poetry since 1788, from concrete poems to prose poems, from the cerebral to the naïve, from the humorous to the confessional, and from formal to free verse. Translations of some striking Aboriginal song poems are one of the high points. Containing over 1000 poems from 170 Australian poets, as well as short critical biographies, this careful reevaluation of Australian poetry makes this a superb book that can be read and enjoyed over a lifetime.' (From the publisher's website.) Sydney : University of New South Wales Press , 2011 pg. 613-614
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon The Land's Meaning : New Selected Poems Randolph Stow , John Kinsella (editor), Fremantle : Fremantle Press , 2012 Z1871351 2012 selected work poetry

    'Randolph Stow's slim body of poetry weighs more than most oeuvres many times its size. It has few equals anywhere in the world. Groundbreaking, historic and essential, it is haunting, lyrical, mythical, spiritual and anchored in place.' John Kinsella (Trove record)

    Alternately prolific and silent, Randolph Stow won the Miles Franklin Literary Award in 1958 and the Patrick White Award in 1979. In The Land's Meaning, John Kinsella brings together selected works of one of Australia's finest modernist poets. Including previously uncollected pieces, the volume's wide ranging introduction provides a rich context for the work of this extraordinary and important poet in the most comprehensive collection of Stow's work to date. (Trove record)

    Fremantle : Fremantle Press , 2012
    pg. 96-97
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon The Weekend Australian 7-8 July 2012 Z1872961 2012 newspaper issue 2012 pg. 21 Section: Review
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Australian Poetry Journal vol. 4 no. 1 2014 7651333 2014 periodical issue poetry essay 2014 pg. 105
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon The Fremantle Press Anthology of Western Australian Poetry John Kinsella (editor), Tracy Ryan (editor), North Fremantle : Fremantle Press , 2017 8848074 2017 anthology poetry

    'The Fremantle Press Anthology of Western Australian Poetry is a comprehensive survey of the state’s poets from the 19th century to today.

    'Featuring work from 128 poets, and accompanied by biographical notes and an introductory essay by editors John Kinsella and Tracy Ryan, this watershed anthology brings together the poems that have contributed to and defined the way that Western Australians see themselves.' (Publication summary)

    North Fremantle : Fremantle Press , 2017

Works about this Work

Ngaangk : Those Sunstruck Miles Catherine Noske , 2024 single work essay
— Appears in: Westerly , August vol. 69 no. 1 2024; (p. 79-98)
'I cannot but start with the looming scale of the sun - the half-pictures or contained slice we see in most drawings. Even there, we are obedient to that generic voice, to well-worn wisdom : don't stare direct. The corner of yellow in a child's picture. It's excess and repetition in sunspots and flares on photographic film. The close detail of this Festival's logo, and the scope it implies. Scope and scopic : despite what we are told as children, we are finding ways to see the sun - as Stow did, again and again in his work, from the very beginning, his world viewed through sun-bright lids. Sun in all its power, ripe gold and life miraculous, sun a wild yellow vision. Divine heat and terror, the cognisance of that sun's cataclysm...(Act One 18)' (Introduction)
Shade to Camp in : The Land's Meaning : New and Selected Poems Michael Farrell , 2021 single work criticism
— Appears in: Randolph Stow : Critical Essays 2021;
A Western Australian Pastoral of Rust and Dust Caitlin Maling , 2021 single work criticism
— Appears in: ISLE : Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment , Summer vol. 28 no. 2 2021; (p. 662–685)

'Born in 1935 to a family of early and successful Western Australian squattocracy (squatter aristocracy), the celebrated mid-century novelist Randolph Stow’s early life in rural Geraldton exposed him to the political contexts surrounding Australian pastoralism, particularly the dispossession and racist treatment of the Yamatji and Wajarri people of the central Gascoyne region and associated environmental destruction. This article reads two of Stow’s pastoral poems in light of these tensions, following the work of Stow’s Geraldton countryman John Kinsella’s understanding of settler Australian pastoral as inevitably fraught, for instead of a blank arcadia, even in retreat the landscape is always occupied (“Contrary Rhetoric” 136). The most influential voice in contemporary Australia (if not international) criticism of the pastoral, Kinsella argues that environmental violence is inextricable from violence done to the occupants of the land as functions of colonization, and the pastoral as it primarily operates in an Australian context occludes this violence. Kinsella writes that the “hierarchy of land ownership, a concept imported from Europe in particular, has meant that no nostalgia, no return to an Eden, is possible. These Edens are about dispossession and ownership by the few” (“Is There an Australian Pastoral” 348). Yet, is this necessarily other to the pastoral, which traces one of its many origin points to Virgil’s dispossession from his ancestral property at Mantua following the 42BC battle of Phillipi? How might an understanding of the pastoral as social form—complex, communal, and political—better help unpack the work of Stow and others? In this article, I take this question as my central concern, revisiting the poetry of Stow, which has largely rested in a critical lacunae since his death in Harwich, UK, in 2010. I am interested in teasing out how the pastoral is intrinsically linked to citizenship and community, or as William Empson writes, “the problems of one and the many, especially their social aspects” (21). This is the rusted pastoral of the Western Australian Wheatbelt Stow offers us, one that, through the questioning of human communities, is porous, allowing nature, history, and politics to filter through.' (Introduction)

Aspects of Australian Poetry in 2012 Michelle Cahill , 2013 single work review
— Appears in: Westerly , June vol. 58 no. 1 2013; (p. 68-91)

'T he act of reading for appraisal rather than pleasure is a privilege that brings me to a deepened understanding of the contemporary in Australian poetry, the way the past is being framed, its traditions, celebrities and enigmas washed up in new and hybrid appearances or redressed in more conventional, sometimes nimbus forms. Judith Wright wrote that the ‘place to find clues is not in the present, it lies in the past: a shallow past, as all immigrants to Australia know, and all of us are immigrants.’ The discipline of reading to filter such a range of voices underlines my foreignness, making reading akin to translation, whilst reciprocally inviting the reader of this essay to become a foreigner to my assumptions and conclusions.' (Introduction)

A Poetry Serving Gaia Henry Sheerwater , 2006 single work criticism
— Appears in: Five Bells , Autumn vol. 13 no. 2 2006; (p. 15-23)
The author describes seven characteristics of green poetry and discusses the works of several Australian and overseas poets.
A Poetry Serving Gaia Henry Sheerwater , 2006 single work criticism
— Appears in: Five Bells , Autumn vol. 13 no. 2 2006; (p. 15-23)
The author describes seven characteristics of green poetry and discusses the works of several Australian and overseas poets.
Landscape and the Australian Imagination Bruce A. Clunies Ross , 1986 single work criticism
— Appears in: Mapped but Not Known : The Australian Landscape of the Imagination : Essays and Poems Presented to Brian Elliott LXXV 11 April 1985 1986; (p. 224-243)
Mal du Pays : Symbolic Geography in the Work of Randolph Stow Martin Leer , 1991 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , May vol. 15 no. 1 1991; (p. 3-25)
The Price of Silence: Further Thoughts on the Poetry of Randolph Stow Fay Zwicky , 1986 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Lyre in the Pawnshop : Essays on Literature and Survival 1974-1984 1986; (p. 103-111)
Aspects of Australian Poetry in 2012 Michelle Cahill , 2013 single work review
— Appears in: Westerly , June vol. 58 no. 1 2013; (p. 68-91)

'T he act of reading for appraisal rather than pleasure is a privilege that brings me to a deepened understanding of the contemporary in Australian poetry, the way the past is being framed, its traditions, celebrities and enigmas washed up in new and hybrid appearances or redressed in more conventional, sometimes nimbus forms. Judith Wright wrote that the ‘place to find clues is not in the present, it lies in the past: a shallow past, as all immigrants to Australia know, and all of us are immigrants.’ The discipline of reading to filter such a range of voices underlines my foreignness, making reading akin to translation, whilst reciprocally inviting the reader of this essay to become a foreigner to my assumptions and conclusions.' (Introduction)

Last amended 19 Sep 2022 13:20:04
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