X: I am working on the transparent and ecocritical portrayal of land injustice among the Australian Aboriginal people in Judith Wright’s collected poetry. 

Y: With regard to land injustice, I am interested in how Judith Wright (a white woman) addresses her whiteness and inherent guilt when writing about environmental issues and racial injustices in Australia. Specifically, how does she bridge the gap between literary activism, which deliberately calls out political and social issues, and poetics? To what extent has environmental literature shifted from being romantic, idealistic, and existential? And does this shift reflect the modern urgency for policy change and literary activism? Does Judith Wright participate in an active conversation about systemic racism and land injustice, to what extent are her poems doing cultural work? 

Z: Using Judith Wright’s poetry as an example of literary activism, I hope to show how there is a concrete connection between environmental injustice and the oppression of the Aboriginal people. If we rethink how poetry uses natural imagery and reflective metaphors, we can understand the cultural connections to people and their landscape. In addition, in grounding her poetry in realistic landscapes and environments, Wright participates in an environmental conversation about humanity’s degradation of both land and marginalized groups of people. 

Sources:

1. Slow Violence And The Environmentalism Of The Poor by Rob Nixon
2. Bad Environmentalism by Nicole Seymour