Living Poet

Henry Kendall was Australia's poet laureate of the bush before Australia even had the term. Writing from inside the gum forests and coastal ranges of colonial New South Wales, Kendall discovered something no Australian poet had quite captured before: the eerie, luminous soul of the native landscape. These poems move between mourning and wonder, between the操and the strange birdsong of an ancient land. His language is muscular and musical, laced with the melancholy that would become a signature of Australian poetry. Kendall wrote with an outsider's passion about a country that was still learning to see itself, and in doing so, he gave later generations their founding voice. This collection captures the raw beauty and deep loneliness of a continent that had never been sung quite this way before. For readers seeking the roots of Australian literature, or anyone who wants to encounter poetry that still feels startlingly fresh more than a century later.