60 Classic Australian Poems

Christopher Cheng (editor)

Gregory Rogers (illustrations)

Random House, Australia: 2009; 158pp

ISBN: 9781741664140

Genre: poetry

Christopher Cheng is a well-regarded Australian writer for children. In this anthology he has selected some of the greatest of Australia's classic poems - ballads and rhymes of the past hundred or more years, written by those who watched our country and its people grow.

 Many of the poets will be well known to adults, who probably grew up with their work in school - Banjo Paterson, Henry Lawson, CJDennis, Adam Lindsay Gordon and Henry Kendall, amongst others.

As Cheng comments in his introduction, ‘At the turn of the last century some of our most popular poets were employed by the major newspapers to travel around the country and report on ‘life on the land'. Other poets simply travelled from town to town under their own steam and wrote of the life, as they saw it, in ballads and verse.' Such poems as Mulga Bill's Bicycle, which looked at the humorous side to the introduction of a new form of transport - the penny farthing bicycle - into Australia. The Days of Cobb & Co looks at the passing of another form of transport, the great horse-drawn drays and carriages. Here are poems about shearing, the hard work of raising cattle, drought and the strong and whimsical characters that laid the building blocks for today's Australia.

Many of these verses carry the ironic and satirical tone that has become the essence of Australian humour. Almost all have been chosen as a window into our past - attitudes, lifestyle and people. As a result, browsing through this collection is a particularly enjoyable history lesson, as well as a delightful excursion into clever use of language, rhyme and rhythm.

Cheng has ordered the poems very carefully so that one leads into another. Andy's Gone with the Cattle, for example is followed by a poem about an ant adventurer. Both are about travel and experience - from macro to micro. As a result of this thoughtful linking of poems, the reader is encouraged to move beyond the individual poem into a more philosophical space, to consider the commonality of experiences and events within the poems. It is very rare to find such care and sensitivity applied to an anthology.

Gregory Rogers black and white illustrations underline the content of each poem, often reminding the reader of humour that is to be found in most situations.

Highly recommended.