Judith Wright
Judith Wright (1915-2000) was an influential Australian poet, environmentalist, and social activist, known for her deep commitment to human rights and the preservation of the natural world. Born near Armidale, New South Wales, she was raised in a household with strong social values, which shaped her early advocacy for issues like Indian independence and Aboriginal rights. Wright pursued a literary career starting in the 1940s, gaining recognition for her poetry that reflects her belief in the interconnectedness of all life—both its beauty and its harsh realities. Her works often addressed pressing social issues, including poverty, war, and environmental degradation, aligning her literary pursuits with her activism. Throughout her life, she received numerous accolades, such as the 1994 Human Rights Award for poetry, and was named an Australian Living Treasure in 1997. She dedicated her later years to activism, culminating in her leadership role in a reconciliation march for Aboriginal rights shortly before her death. Her legacy continues through her literary contributions and the social changes she championed.
Judith Wright
Australian poet, nonfiction writer, editor, and activist.
- Born: May 31, 1915
- Birthplace: Near Armidale, New South Wales, Australia
- Died: June 25, 2000
- Place of death: Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia
Biography
Judith Arundell Wright was born on May 31, 1915, near Armidale, New South Wales, Australia, to Phillip Arundell Wright and Ethel Mabel Bigg Wright. Her mother came from English gentry, and her father came from Scottish Jacobites who, after fleeing to France, changed the family name from MacGregor to Wright and settled in Cornwall.
Wright grew up with a strong social conscience, at a young age startling her parents, who were true to the Crown, by supporting Mahatma Gandhi in his opposition to imperial rule. Her schooling led to conventional jobs as a secretary, a clerk, and a statistician, but her love of literature and her determination to fight for human rights and environmental preservation, as well as her marriage to like-minded philosophical writer J. P. McKinney, resulted in a very different kind of life. She began writing poetry in earnest in the 1940’s and earned early recognition.
Her love for the land, her belief that we did not need to see ourselves in conflict with nature, that we needed to observe and accept it as a part of the cycle of life, gave her poetry a metaphysical cast. She saw all the elements of life as interconnected: the mind and body, the elements, plants and animals, flora and fauna. Her poetry was not naïvely romantic, however; she presented the evils as well as the beauty of nature, the carrion bird feasting on the dead and the repulsive starving eels eliciting reader sympathies.
Wright was unable to follow the New Criticism school of the 1940’s, with its sole focus on the text and its exclusion of biography and extra-textual information. Wright’s poetry was inseparable from her politics; her writing helped her to explore where she stood on issues. Thus, in her works as well as in her activist causes, she fought against poverty, war, uranium mining, nuclear power, and rainforest decimation. She also fought to save the Great Barrier Reef and support the Aboriginal people in their struggles for justice. She sought to make a tangible difference with her poetry.
Wright’s works as well as her causes earned her awards and deep respect and led to positive changes in Australian society. Over the years, she received the 1964 Britannica Australia Awards Literature Medal, 1971 Grace Leven Poetry Prize, 1974 National Book Council Award for Australian Literature, 1991 New South Wales State Literary Award, 1994 Human Rights Award for poetry, 1995 A. A. Phillips Award, and a handful of honorary doctorates. In 1997, she was also named an Australian Living Treasure. As an activist, she helped bring to light the injustices suffered by the Aboriginal people who were nearly driven to extinction by white settlers. She also introduced readers to Aboriginal tales, fables, and myths, which gave evidence of the wisdom and creativity of the Australian natives, who were much closer to the land than those who came to tame it.
In 1985, when Wright was seventy and suffering from deafness, failing eyesight, and limited mobility, she determined to devote her remaining energies to her causes, foregoing further serious literary endeavours. She did produce a memoir of her childhood and released a few poetry collections thereafter, but spent the better part of the next fifteen years speaking out against injustice. Her last public act was to lead a march for Aboriginal reconciliation, in freezing weather, across Sydney Harbour Bridge. She died of a heart attack on June 25, 2000, in Canberra. Since then, several volumes of her correspondence have been published.
Author Works
Children's Literature:
Going on Talking, 1992
Edited text(s):
Australian Poetry, 1948
A Book of Australian Verse, 1956
New Land, New Language, 1957
Preoccupations in Australian Poetry, 1965
Poetry from Australia, 1969
Witnesses of Spring: Unpublished Poems by Shaw Neilson, 1970
Long Fiction:
Magpie Summer, 1991
Nonfiction:
William Baylebridge and the Modern Problem, 1955
Kings of the Dingoes, 1958
Generations of Men, 1959
The Day the Mountains Played, 1960
Range the Mountains High, 1962
Charles Harpur, 1963
Shaw Neilson, 1963
The River and the Road, 1966
Henry Lawson, 1967
Because I Was Invited, 1975
The Coral Battleground, 1977
The Cry for the Dead, 1981
New Zealand after Nuclear War, 1987 (with Wren Green and Tony Cairns)
Born of the Conquerors, 1991
Tales of a Great Aunt: A Memoir , 1998
Half a Lifetime, 2000 (Patricia Clarke, editor)
Equal Heart and Mind: Letters between Judith Wright and Jack McKinney, 2000 (Patricia Clarke and Meredith McKinney, editors)
With Love & Fury: Selected Letters of Judith Wright, 2006 (Patricia Clarke and Meredith McKinney, editors)
Portrait of a Friendship: The Letters of Barbara Blackman and Judith Wright, 1950-2000, 2007 (Bryony Cosgrove, editor)
Poetry:
Australian Bird Poems, 1940
The Moving Image, 1946
Woman to Man, 1949
The Two Fires, 1955
The Gateway, 1955
Birds, 1962
Country Town, 1963
Five Senses, 1963
City Sunrise, 1964
The Other Half, 1966
Collected Poems: 1942–1970, 1971
Alive: Poems 1971–72, 1973
Half Dream, 1975
Fourth Quarter, and Other Poems, 1976
The Double Tree: Selected Poems, 1942–1976, 1978
Phantom Dwelling, 1985
Many Roads Meet Here, 1985
We Call for a Treaty, 1985
Rainforest, 1987
A Human Pattern, 1990
Through Broken Glass, 1992
Judith Wright: Collected Poems, 1942-1985, 1994
Short Fiction:
The Nature of Love, 1966
Bibliography
Arnott, Georgina. The Unknown Judith Wright. UWAP, 2016. A biography focusing primarily on Wright's upbringing and student days.
Brady, Veronica. South of My Days: A Biography of Judith Wright. HarperCollins, 1998. An authorized literary biography of Wright.
Clark, Gary. "The Two Threads of a Life: Judith Wright, the Environment and Aboriginality." Antipodes, vol. 20, no. 2, Dec. 2006, pp. 155–61. Literary Reference Center Plus, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lkh&AN=24127185&site=lrc-plus. Accessed 27 June 2017. Analyzes Wright's autobiography Half a Lifetime with respect to her feelings on colonization and Indigenous Australians' sufferings.
Sheridan, Susan. "Cold War, Home Front: Australian Women Writers and Artists in the 1950S." Australian Literary Studies, vol. 20, no. 3, May 2002, pp. 155–66. Literary Reference Center Plus, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lkh&AN=6835590&site=lrc-plus. Accessed 27 June 2017. Compares the experiences of Judith Wright and a contemporary poet, Dorothy Green, with those of other Australian women creators of their generation.
Zinn, Christopher. "Obituary: Judith Wright—Australian Poet Who Championed Aboriginal Rights and Environmental Issues." The Guardian, 29 June 2000, www.theguardian.com/news/2000/jun/29/guardianobituaries.books. Accessed 27 June 2017. Briefly covers Wright's upbringing, poetic career, and place in the canon of Australian literature.