Mr Gak Boc

Good morning class, today I’m going to be discussing Australia.

Australia has changed since the days of the early settlers who farmed and cultivated this great brown land, most of which is largely desert and thus, most of Australia’s growing population now reside in the urban cities that fringe the coastline.

These images of vast country, dry desert, country towns and cities are the images that I will be analysing in my talk today through the poems, Country Town and William Street.

The first Poem I will be assessing is Country Towns. Country towns is a poem written by poet Kenneth Slessor. One of the images portrayed in this poem is the idea of the slowed pace of a country town.

Significant images in “Country Towns” are of a sleepy town that moves in a slow pace,
“Find me a bench, and let me snore” this line in the final stanza of the poem, emphasizes the slow nature of country towns which are far removed from bustling urban cities where the pace is fast.
“Verandas baked with musty sleep” is the poet observing the town and further shapes an image and feeling of a slow, sleepy and laidback town and people who aren’t concerned with rushing.

In contrast to the shuffling pace of ‘country Towns’ is ‘William Street”, also written by Kenneth Slessor.

The images shown in William Street are the harsh reality of the city life ( and the dark underbelly of the city) unlike country towns where there is a slow pace, William Street is fast paced-“ The pulsing arrows and the running fire”.

Kenneth Slessor uses rhyming couplets to make the speed of the poem as fast as the city he is describing. The surface of busy William Street is splashed with the glow of neon light over the city. “The red globe of light, the liquor green” tell readers that the city is a colourful place to be- there is much to see and do.

Slessor defends Sydney’s description claiming the trappings of a metropolis to be beautiful and challenging those Australians who only see beauty in the bush. Slessor encourages us to look at what may strike some as ugly, harsh, brutal and see it as lovely, he does all of this by writing “You Find It Ugly, I Find It Lovely” after each stanza.

This repetition makes readers aware of his opinion of the city despite prior descriptions of it being, “Of grease that blesses onions with a hiss” or “death at their elbows, hunger at their heels” which are certainly not “lovely” descriptions of anything typically.

The ugliness of the city is lovely to Slessor and perhaps he is trying to show us that our own perceptions are often ignorant to seeing beauty in a city so grey, cold and so different to Country Towns.