THEME 2: Nature under Threat.

PLAN for a report in response

Poets can soothe us, provoke us, highlight faults or draw attention to important issues in society. Many Australian poems I have read deal with this theme of Nature under Threat. To sample how this theme is treated in Australian poetry, I have selected two poems, "We are going" by Oodjeroo Noonuccal and "The Improvers" by Colin Thiele. Both are twentieth century poems but with very different points of view.

Noonuccal identifies nature as the setting, "kangaroo, emu, bora ring, The Thunder" but also her "little tribe" is closely identified with in it as part of it: "We are the corroboree, and the bora ring" (13). It is they too that are under threat as the title suggests. "They are subdued. . strangers . . we are going". Not only is the sacred bora ring desecrated by the white man's trash literally, but also in parallel the little tribe of Aborigines is doomed to extinction too.

Thiele sees Nature under Threat in highway construction: "The bloody bulldozers . . directed by Big Brother . . . slaver and yammer . . . devouring the green gift of grass. . . and desecrate the green waywardness of each old byway". Thiele dramatises some physical facts that indicate a society in transition. Risking some hyperbole, he grandstands in a nostalgic even melodramatic way about the damage done to the natural environment by the construction of a freeway. He suggests it is a irrepressible urge in us, like a beast out of control....

Each poet takes a different view. . .

AN outline of another possible plan

1. Compare the contents of the poems: WHAT each is saying about the theme. How they differ/ agree. Perspectives they offer on the theme.

2. HOW they put it: How the devices work to persuade, inform, challenge the reader. How well the poems work as poems.

3. WHY Evaluation/ appreciation/ critique of their poems; how they have informed you and us about the theme. Have they added to the debate? What perspectives can they offer to inform and how well did these work? Where they stand along the gamut of possible views on this theme.

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