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Jindyworobak Movement
The Jindyworobak Movement was an Australian literary movement of the 1930s and 1940s whose members, mostly poets, sought to contribute to a uniquely Australian culture through the integration of Indigenous Australian subjects, language and mythology. The movement's stated aim was to "free Australian art from whatever alien influences trammel it" and create works based on an engagement with the Australian landscape and an "understanding of Australia's history and traditions, primeval, colonial and modern".
The movement began in Adelaide, South Australia, in 1937, when Rex Ingamells and other poets founded the Jindyworobak Club. Ingamells outlined the movement's aims in an address entitled On Environmental Values (1937). "Jindyworobak" comes from the Woiwurrung language, formerly spoken around modern-day Melbourne, meaning "to join" or "to annex". It was used by James Devaney in his 1929 book The Vanished Tribes, in which he claims to have sourced it from a 19th-century vocabulary. Ingamells is said to have chosen the word due to its outlandish and symbolic qualities. The name was sometimes shortened to "Jindy", and "Jindys" came to refer to members of the group, which included Nancy Cato, Ian Mudie and Roland Robinson.
The Jindyworobaks found inspiration in the Australian bush ballad tradition, Kangaroo (1928) by D. H. Lawrence and P. R. Stephensen's The Foundations of Culture in Australia (1936), and shared a vision similar to that of some of their contemporaries in the arts, such as author Xavier Herbert, artist Margaret Preston and composer John Antill. However, the movement also attracted criticism for being culturally insular and overtly nationalist, and has more recently been described as racist in appropriating Indigenous culture. The Jindyworobak Anthology was published annually from 1938 to 1953, and the Jindyworobak Review (1948) collected the first ten years of this publication. An extensive history of the movement, The Jindyworobaks, was published in 1979.
Starting off as a literary club in Adelaide, South Australia in 1938, the Jindyworobak movement was supported by many Australian artists, poets, and writers. Many were fascinated by Indigenous Australian culture and the Outback, and desired to improve the white Australian's understanding and appreciation of them. Other features came into play, among them white Australia's increasing alienation from its European origins; the Depression of the 1930s which recalled the economic troubles of the end of the 19th century; an increasingly urban or suburban Australian population alienated from the wild Australia of the Outback etc.; the First World War and the coming of World War II and also the coming of early mass market media in the form of the radio, recordings, newspapers and magazines. Sense of place was particularly important to the Jindyworobak movement.
Ingamells produced Colonial Culture as a prose manifesto of the movement, "in response to L. F. Giblin's urging that poets in Australia should portray Australian nature and people as they are in Australia, not with the 'European' gaze." and shortly after the first Jindyworobak Anthology came out.
In 1941, the poet and critic A. D. Hope ridiculed the Jindyworobaks as "the Boy Scout school of poetry", a comment for which he apologised in Native Companions in 1975 saying "some amends are due, I think, to these Jindyworobaks". Others such as R. H. Morrison derided "Jindyworobackwardness". Hal Porter wrote of meeting Rex Ingamells who he said "buys me a porter gaff and tries to persuade me to be a Jindyworobak - that is, a poet who thinks that words from the minute vocabulary of the earth's most primitive race must be used to express Australia".
Although "Jindies" concentrated on Australian culture, not all were of Australian origin—for example, William Hart-Smith, who is sometimes connected to the movement, was born in England, and spent most of his life in New Zealand after a decade (1936–1946) in Australia.
Anthologies of Jindyworobak material were produced until 1953.
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Jindyworobak Movement
The Jindyworobak Movement was an Australian literary movement of the 1930s and 1940s whose members, mostly poets, sought to contribute to a uniquely Australian culture through the integration of Indigenous Australian subjects, language and mythology. The movement's stated aim was to "free Australian art from whatever alien influences trammel it" and create works based on an engagement with the Australian landscape and an "understanding of Australia's history and traditions, primeval, colonial and modern".
The movement began in Adelaide, South Australia, in 1937, when Rex Ingamells and other poets founded the Jindyworobak Club. Ingamells outlined the movement's aims in an address entitled On Environmental Values (1937). "Jindyworobak" comes from the Woiwurrung language, formerly spoken around modern-day Melbourne, meaning "to join" or "to annex". It was used by James Devaney in his 1929 book The Vanished Tribes, in which he claims to have sourced it from a 19th-century vocabulary. Ingamells is said to have chosen the word due to its outlandish and symbolic qualities. The name was sometimes shortened to "Jindy", and "Jindys" came to refer to members of the group, which included Nancy Cato, Ian Mudie and Roland Robinson.
The Jindyworobaks found inspiration in the Australian bush ballad tradition, Kangaroo (1928) by D. H. Lawrence and P. R. Stephensen's The Foundations of Culture in Australia (1936), and shared a vision similar to that of some of their contemporaries in the arts, such as author Xavier Herbert, artist Margaret Preston and composer John Antill. However, the movement also attracted criticism for being culturally insular and overtly nationalist, and has more recently been described as racist in appropriating Indigenous culture. The Jindyworobak Anthology was published annually from 1938 to 1953, and the Jindyworobak Review (1948) collected the first ten years of this publication. An extensive history of the movement, The Jindyworobaks, was published in 1979.
Starting off as a literary club in Adelaide, South Australia in 1938, the Jindyworobak movement was supported by many Australian artists, poets, and writers. Many were fascinated by Indigenous Australian culture and the Outback, and desired to improve the white Australian's understanding and appreciation of them. Other features came into play, among them white Australia's increasing alienation from its European origins; the Depression of the 1930s which recalled the economic troubles of the end of the 19th century; an increasingly urban or suburban Australian population alienated from the wild Australia of the Outback etc.; the First World War and the coming of World War II and also the coming of early mass market media in the form of the radio, recordings, newspapers and magazines. Sense of place was particularly important to the Jindyworobak movement.
Ingamells produced Colonial Culture as a prose manifesto of the movement, "in response to L. F. Giblin's urging that poets in Australia should portray Australian nature and people as they are in Australia, not with the 'European' gaze." and shortly after the first Jindyworobak Anthology came out.
In 1941, the poet and critic A. D. Hope ridiculed the Jindyworobaks as "the Boy Scout school of poetry", a comment for which he apologised in Native Companions in 1975 saying "some amends are due, I think, to these Jindyworobaks". Others such as R. H. Morrison derided "Jindyworobackwardness". Hal Porter wrote of meeting Rex Ingamells who he said "buys me a porter gaff and tries to persuade me to be a Jindyworobak - that is, a poet who thinks that words from the minute vocabulary of the earth's most primitive race must be used to express Australia".
Although "Jindies" concentrated on Australian culture, not all were of Australian origin—for example, William Hart-Smith, who is sometimes connected to the movement, was born in England, and spent most of his life in New Zealand after a decade (1936–1946) in Australia.
Anthologies of Jindyworobak material were produced until 1953.
