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!