Early Queensland through poets' eyes

This website is dedicated to Queensland poetry, and to Queensland poets who flourished between 1859 and 1959.

Back then, Queensland was under populated, undereducated and under resourced. But more than 250 Queensland authors published books of poetry in that first 100 years. There are bush ballads, love poems, modernist works, commentaries on current events, satires, poems of place and religious poems. Some of the poems are timeless, some reflect the preoccupations and prejudices of the age in which the poets wrote.

Some poets wrote for fun, a few for money, but most, like most poets now, wrote their poems because they had a need to write. Despite the passing of the years, their work provides a genuine, easily readable, insight into what people who lived in Queensland were thinking and feeling so long ago.

These pages set out a brief overview of Queensland poetry, and introduce you to the work of some of the more interesting poets of the period, to their lives and their passions. Enjoy!

Poem of the month

Bush Buncombe

by Arthur Wade (1947)

I'd been camping in the back-blocks for a half a year or so,
During which I think it never ceased to rain,
I was seedy, I was tired, I considered life was slow
And, like Solomon, I thought that life was vain.

So I emptied out my knapsack for some soothing book to read,
And this is what I found – a painful lot-
A...

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Featured Poet

Eva Mary O'Doherty

‘Have faith, I’ll wait’

Eva Mary O’Doherty (1839-1910), better known as ‘Eva of the Nation’, was probably more famous for a poetic gesture than for the considerable body of poetry that she wrote.

Click here to read more about Eva Mary O'Doherty