Dear Editor My name is John Foulcher, renowned Australian poet. I have recently been surfing the World Wide Web and by accident I come up with your site, “Online Anthology of Australian Poets.” The subject matter of poetry attracted me to wonder around your website. I believe my poetry should be included in your collection for I have lived and breathed Australian culture for just over 50 years now, I have recorded my way of life in my poems, and in particular I have a specific poem to refer to you, that is of my own and two others (also of my own work) that I think are you should seriously consider having in your collection. The first poem I think you should consider in adding to your list of poems is “For the Fire”, this poem was about the time I went in to the forest to get some lumber, and during my time there I noticed some of natures creations around me, like the kookaburra and wind that swerved in and out of the trees etc. The purpose of the poem was to express my interests of nature and how I felt and what I experienced when I was in the woods at that time. There’s also that life and death aspect in this poem, in which the bird has the lizard in his mouth and also by the word “fire.” The use of alliteration, tone, mood, theme and other elements that construct a well balanced poem are in this piece of literature.
In the first stanza the sentence, “it’s a singular, human thud”, this line creates a picture in the mind that there’s feel of isolation and lonesomeness, and as it goes on the theme of nature reveals itself even more eg “only the wind through the sparse leaves.” There is alliteration in the stanzas of 3 and 6 “blade beak” and claws clutching.” This poem also has a rhythm to it; the stanzas are not constructed in that unbalanced way in which it’s hard to keep flowing feel to the literature. The second poem is “Bradman’s last Innings”; it is a little momentum to the great Sir Donald Bradman and his effect on Australian life. It is about how Bradman was more than just a cricket great, but also a light in people’s lives, that relieved the pain of war and anguish. He symbolized the gentleman in us all, the fair player, and the great Australian icon. The structure is simple, 4 sets of three lined stanzas. The introduction sums up the feeling of what many felt when he was bowled out first ball, “bowled out for a duck, you could have asked for better”, alliteration is also used in this literature eg “war, women waiting.” I’ve used descriptive words to paint pictures in the head to create a mental image of what I saw that day eg “clear white flannels sharp against the green turf.” The whole poem has that flowing feel to it also just like the first poem mentioned.
The third poem is “martin and the hand grenade”, it recounts an event when a little boy brought an unarmed grenade to school to show to his equals, and the effect of the grenade on the minds of the infants. The subject matter of war straight away creates the mood to the poem, the descriptive words such as firing, bleak, power, hurls and so on, play an important part in this poem, for the words create the presents of danger and the known. There’s no actual line in the poem that states they are in the classroom, but we are persuaded that there is a class room by the students’ reaction to the grenade in martin’s hand, in which “the class pauses for history.” There’s also a play on words in this piece (pun) “the dead weapon hurls across the mind fields”, this line is symbolic of children playing war games, and how non-threatening it is through their eyes. I also included metaphor as a technique eg ” the small war”, referring to the small hand grenade. There’s a theme of destruction in this poem, the children’s minds, the grenade it’s self, the reference to war by the lines “man’s mortality”, create that essence of death in which war has imbedded in it. With these three poems I hope you see in yourself in why you should include my works in your gallery of poets and poems.
With most of my poems, I aim at the aspects of life and base them on the events of my life, and as I have mentioned before I have lived in Australia through out my whole life, and I have experienced many of Australia’s ups and downs, my poems aren’t just about my expression on an event in my life but there are partly historical events such as the “Bradman’s last innings.” Sincerely yours John Foulcher.