It’s Poetry Friday and I have had a super poetic week. I have been lucky enough to spend time with young writers running poetry writing masterclasses, courtesy of the Literature Centre and which I will write more about in a separate post.

Then, on Wednesday a lovely thing was announced. I am now a Patron of the Dorothea Mackellar Poetry Awards, a nationwide poetry writing contest for school aged writers.  Here’s the announcement.

It makes me sound quite good, doesn’t it????

Though I am very humbled to be asked to do this, I am also very very excited. Poetry, writing and young people are my life’s work!  If I can play any role in inspiring children to read and write poetry, I will. So when I was asked to be a Patron – after I picked myself up off the floor – I said a very emphatic YES.

SO, to celebrate, I thought it might be nice to share Mackellar’s best known poem, which I not only remember learning by rote in school, but also remember learning to sing it for a  royal visit (which at the time was very exciting, though these days I am firmly of the belief Australia should become a republic).   Here it is:

My Country

by Dorothea Mackellar

The love of field and coppice,
Of green and shaded lanes.
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins,
Strong love of grey-blue distance
Brown streams and soft dim skies
I know but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror –
The wide brown land for me!

A stark white ring-barked forest
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon.
Green tangle of the brushes,
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops
And ferns the warm dark soil.

Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When sick at heart, around us,
We see the cattle die –
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady, soaking rain.

Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the Rainbow Gold,
For flood and fire and famine,
She pays us back threefold –
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze.

An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land –
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand –
Though earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.

And here you can hear it read by the poet, with images that try to capture the essence of the words:

And here you can read more of her work

If you are in Australia and are a teacher or parent of school aged young people, do encourage them to consider entering the competition for 2023, which is now open. There is an optional theme, The Winding Road, and all the details can be found here.

And now, this patron is off to patronise the rest of the Poetry Friday posts for today. No winding roads – if you want to join me, you can head straight  to Tanita’s website where you  will find the Roundup.