The Poor Can Feed the Birds

"The Poor Can Feed the Birds" is a poem by Australian poet John Shaw Neilson.

It was first published in the poet's collection Beauty Imposes : Some Recent Verse in 1938, and later in several of the poet's other collections and other Australian poetry anthologies.

Critial reception

While reviewing Beauty Imposes : Some Recent Verse a reviewer in The Mail (Adelaide) called this poem "outstanding among the latest offerings, it has beauty, poignancy, and significance".

In her appraisal of Australian poetry, Preoccupations in Australian Poetry, Judith Wright noted that this was one of Neilson's "indignant and pitiful poems about the human misery that results from greed and oppression". She found it odd that, in spite of this and other such works, Neilson "has never been claimed with any assurance by the writers of the 'class-struggle' as one of themselves."

Further publications Poets of Australia : An Anthology of Australian Verse edited by George Mackaness, Angus & Robertson, 1946 Freedom on the Wallaby : Poems of the Australian People edited by Marjorie Pizer, Pinchgut Press, 1953 Shaw Neilson edited by Judith Wright, Angus and Robertson, 1963 From the Ballads to Brennan edited by T. Inglis Moore, Angus & Robertson, 1964 Cross-Country : A Book of Australian Verse edited by John Barnes and Brian MacFarlane, Heinemann, 1984 My Country : Australian Poetry and Short Stories, Two Hundred Years edited by Leonie Kramer, Lansdowne, 1985 The Oxford Anthology of Australian Literature edited by Leonie Kramer and Adrian Mitchell, Oxford University Press, 1985 John Shaw Neilson : Poetry, Autobiography and Correspondence edited by Cliff Hanna, University of Queensland Press, 1991 Selected Poems by John Shaw Neilson, Angus and Robertson, 1993 Hell and After : Four Early English-language Poets of Australia edited by Les Murray, Carcanet, 2005 An Anthology of Australian Poetry to 1920 edited by John Kinsella, University of Western Australia Library, 2007 Collected Verse of John Shaw Neilson edited by Margaret Roberts, UWA Publishing, 2012

See also 1938 in poetry 1938 in literature 1938 in Australian literature Australian literature

References