Volume 10 103
away in the Pacific Ocean. This war, in the 1940s,
pushed Australia into the global community as a
completely separate political entity.
In the United States, the late 1950s and early
1960s are seen as a peaceful time curing which the
country enjoyed economic prosperity and stability,
in part because it had become the world’s leading
economy after the nations of Europe and Asia had
suffered the destructive effects of World War II.
As the trauma of the war receded into the past and
the economy grew, Americans became uneasy
with comfort and complacency; the social confor-
mity of the 50s led to social revolutions in the 60s.
Australians picked up American social values,
mostly through the visual media, such as televi-
sion and movies. The country did not have a film
industry, and these media mostly showed products
that were made in the United States. Thus, a poem
like “Drifters” shows influences of the Australian
swagman tradition, of John Steinbeck’s The
Grapes of Wrath,of the independent spirit of
American “beat” poetry of the late 50s and of the
independent spirit that defines both countries.
Critical Overview
Bruce Dawe is associated with a small, intellectual
group of poets who worked at or around Univer-
sity of Melbourne in the late 1950s. Writing in
1967, Clement Semmler categorized these writers
for their sense of irony, identifying Dawe in par-
ticular as a “sardonic urban poet,” depending upon
“the native ironic shrug to counter a tendency to-
ward sentimentality” in his work. History has
shown that this post-modern irony was not unique
to Australian writers, and that Dawe was not very
unique in his urban toughness, when looked at from
a global perspective. Still, Semmler’s focus on
Dawe as a leader in his field has withstood the test
of time.
Dawe is one of the most popular poets to come
out of the Australian movement of the 1960s. One
of the reasons for his popularity was that he made
his mark in the public’s conscious early, with his
first collection, No Fixed Address,which included
the poem “Drifters.” While the other young Mel-
bourne poets of the day were intellectual and
showed at least some debt to English and Ameri-
can literary tradition, Dawe wrote in a new style,
practically rewriting the rules of poetry by himself.
Thomas Shapcott, an Australian writer who as-
sembled the volume Contemporary American &
Australian Poetry, credited Dawe with bringing
about “a very real re-thinking”: “at once vernacu-
lar and expressive of the new, post-war, outer-sub-
urban hinterland,” was the way that Shapcott char-
acterized Dawe’s work. “It was the language of a
culture previously untapped in our writing, and
Dawe gave expression to it with humor and very
considerable skill.” No one had captured the way
Australians talk so exactly, nor recognized the
beauty of everyday Australian life. Dawe was the
first writer to face the new reality of Australia’s
poor as they shifted from a country to an urban
background.
“Drifters” is one of the most influential poems
from Dawe’s early period, standing out not just for
its theme but for its humanity. “‘Drifters’ is a poem
to compare with Hardy and Larkin,” Vivian Smith
wrote in The Oxford History of Australian Litera-
ture,putting Dawe in league with two of the twen-
tieth century’s greatest poets, both known for their
understanding of ordinary people. She further
praises “Drifters” not only for the empathy it shows
toward the underclass, who Smith refers to as the
“down-and-outers,” but for presenting its empathy
with a calm and controlled tone. “The remarkable
achievement of this poem is in its dynamic move-
ment,” Smith explains: “it moves forward and up-
ward rather than drifting down, to show how in a
life of drifting, the elation of hope and happiness
and surprise are sustaining elements. This captur-
ing of a sense of unquenchable hope in an other-
wise hopeless situation adds to the poignancy of
the poem.”
Since the 1960s, Bruce Dawe’s reputation as
a major Australian poet has been solidified. Hav-
ing made an early reputation for writing in an in-
novative style, he has remained fairly consistent
throughout the decades, growing in compassion,
not inventiveness. His early, immense popularity
led some critics to initially make light of his
artistry, but over the decades those writers have
come to respect his work. He is still considered one
of his country’s greatest poets, and is considered
an innovator who opened Australian poetry up to
a new awareness of the lives and verbal style of the
ordinary people.Criticism
David Kelly
David Kelly is an instructor of creative writ-
ing and composition at two colleges in Illinois. In
the following essay, he examines aspects that make
“Drifters” a distinctly Australian poem.Drifters