Unknown Soldier single work   poetry   "They say I'm the unknown soldier,"
Issue Details: First known date: 2007... 2007 Unknown Soldier
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Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon The Unknown Soldier and Other Poems Archie Weller , Bassendean : Access Press , 2007 Z1479906 2007 selected work poetry

    'Archie Weller clearly shows himself as a poet for the underdog feeling a misfit at his boarding school and after leaving, immersing himself in Aboriginality absorbing the lifestyle and legends of a wide circle of Aboriginal friends from all walks of life. He explains his poems as important moments in his life.' (Source: Booktopia website)

    Bassendean : Access Press , 2007
    pg. 1-4

Works about this Work

Speaking for the Dead : Writing and the Unknown Australian Soldier Ffion Murphy , 2018 single work criticism
— Appears in: TEXT : Journal of Writing and Writing Courses , April vol. 22 no. 1 2018;

'One third of the 60,000 Australians killed in the 1914-1918 war were unable to be identified. Known collectively as the ‘Unknown Soldier’ they were reburied in the postwar years with the inscription ‘Known unto God’. In 1993, the remains of one Australian killed on the Western Front were exhumed, repatriated and interred in the Hall of Memory at the Australian War Memorial. In 2007, Archie Weller published a poem titled the ‘Unknown Soldier’ (Weller 2007) which gives a name, voice, history and character to the soldier-larrikin and anti-hero whose bones lie there, effectively challenging former prime-minister Paul Keating’s eulogy which insists ‘We will never know who this Australian was’ (Keating 1993). Weller deploys prosopopoeia, which has been described as the ‘fiction of the voice-from-beyond-the-grave’ and a ‘master trope’ of poetic discourse. His verse undercuts notions of the sacred associated with the Unknown Soldier and creates presence from absence, making explicit a key motive of imaginative writing. This paper speculates on the potency of the ‘unknown’ and the way that texts like tombs assist concealment and revelation, remembering and forgetting, resurrection and erasure.' (Publication abstract)

Speaking for the Dead : Writing and the Unknown Australian Soldier Ffion Murphy , 2018 single work criticism
— Appears in: TEXT : Journal of Writing and Writing Courses , April vol. 22 no. 1 2018;

'One third of the 60,000 Australians killed in the 1914-1918 war were unable to be identified. Known collectively as the ‘Unknown Soldier’ they were reburied in the postwar years with the inscription ‘Known unto God’. In 1993, the remains of one Australian killed on the Western Front were exhumed, repatriated and interred in the Hall of Memory at the Australian War Memorial. In 2007, Archie Weller published a poem titled the ‘Unknown Soldier’ (Weller 2007) which gives a name, voice, history and character to the soldier-larrikin and anti-hero whose bones lie there, effectively challenging former prime-minister Paul Keating’s eulogy which insists ‘We will never know who this Australian was’ (Keating 1993). Weller deploys prosopopoeia, which has been described as the ‘fiction of the voice-from-beyond-the-grave’ and a ‘master trope’ of poetic discourse. His verse undercuts notions of the sacred associated with the Unknown Soldier and creates presence from absence, making explicit a key motive of imaginative writing. This paper speculates on the potency of the ‘unknown’ and the way that texts like tombs assist concealment and revelation, remembering and forgetting, resurrection and erasure.' (Publication abstract)

Last amended 23 Sep 2014 17:20:19
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