Judith Wright

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Poetic images retain the flesh and aroma of experience; memorable images dramatise movements to identity, empowerment and the righting of wrongs. Judith Wright uses metaphors of the bud, flame tree growth, compass heart, ageless crimson rose, rising sap, implacable heart, and “lovers who share one mind” to express human and cosmic yearning for fufillment or salvation. In her poems we hear the great mystery of life in the dynamic interdependence of waterfall, tree ferns and mountain gum. Judith Wright’s metaphysical connections grow from these observations upon the lives of various trees. Her ethical imperatives, her celebrations of patient waiting and her admiration of nature’s abundance and beauty in these poems continue to ignite theological reflections for us today.

Judith Wright’s environmental credentials were excellent. Many of us feel powerless about the trees’ destruction as we opine that whole trees disappear into the photocopier but we do not wear the passion she had about what that actually means for our own precarious environment. Her focus on the majesty, life-sap and symbolism of the individual tree in several poems across her career is worth revisiting at this time of sustained drought. I write to emphasise that her celebration of the key symbolism of our native trees can evoke theological reflections for an eco-environmental ethic of substance.

Wright’s anthologies are sprinkled with celebrations of trees. We find poems on the camphor laurel, cedars, the wattle and the wattle-tree, the cucalypt, the flame-tree, the pepperina, the orange-tree, the scribbly-gum, and gum-trees among others. It ought to be noted that Wright’s use of the definite article in these poems’ titles both points to the particular genus and to the tree as an emotive symbol. To describe and empathesise with gums, cedars or flame-trees is powerful poetry but to reify them into objects of admiration or symbols of permanence was meant to remind her readers of the wealth and precariousness of our natural inheritance.

Judith Wright was passionately concerned about sand mining, land clearance and the trees’ destruction, for what is unique and distinguishing about Australia is to be found in her landscape. When she drew attention to trees, she was speaking comprehensively to Australians about their natural inheritance. I rather think that she saw the trees as natural corollaries to the many kinds of birds she wrote about, in their diversity, their resilient struggle for life in difficult circumstances and in their silent contribution to the ecosystem we all breathe.

These considerations do relate to us, for the Christian is open to mystery, perceiving the word the touches the heart, seeking the word that gathers and unites, and seeking to implement the vision of agape primarily expressed in the Incarnation. The Christian reader of poetry should have a reflective consciousness of mystery, and be open about all reality with her whole heart to words of truth, seeking words for joy, unity and coherence, within the interpretative community’s mission to seek God in all things and to bring forth the Kingdom of God.

We are turned into a great tree

The power and presence of a great tree is a force to be admired as a moment of valuable insight. Her thoughts in one significant moment of reverie liken humans to trees for being rooted and grounded in time and evolutionary continuity:

standing here in the night

we are turned to a great tree,

every leaf a star,

its roots eternity. (“Night”)

Recognising the flux and changeability of this life, Wright sees it as directed to fulfillment. To see the human race as growing into a great tree offers many resonances about the patterns, processes and purpose of life.

This metaphysical turn in her verse emerges readily enough to link the particular and concrete sensory perception with temporal and spatial contexts. Trees are significant parts of that