One of the disadvantages of choosing to feature works published in the 1940s is that we’re restricted to ones that are out of copyright. Because the range of texts is small, we’re compelled to feature works we might otherwise overlook for one reason or another – mostly to do with our own tastes, biases and prejudices.
Today’s poem by Isolde Ramsay is one I wouldn’t normally select to feature. Yet there’s an honesty of simply putting out there what we find, rather than curating the material. Ramsay’s “To an old-timer” gives very little suggestion that it was written amid the flux of post-WWII Australia with its American influences and the changing status of women. There is no hint of the poetry battles that gave rise to the experimentation of Ern Malley or the sensitivities to the landscape and Indigenous culture shown in the writing of the Jindyworobaks. Rather, it reads as unapologetically nostalgic for a time long gone, the ethos of the bush celebrated by The Bulletin writers of the 1890s, the “bush tradition” that hung on long after the time most Australians lived in the cities and suburbs.
The little we know about the poet comes from Trove and AustLit. She was born Isolde Brunhilde Wurfel in Dubbo, NSW, in 1898. Her father was an orange orchardist who got into trouble in 1912 brawling with a neighbour – perhaps the victim of racism and anti-German sentiment in the lead-up to the First World War. She appears to have published only a handful of poems, beginning in her 20s, and mostly in the Sydney Morning Herald. In 1939, she contributed to a volume of Australian poetry called Australia Speaks, her poem reprinted in the Herald in 1941. To my surprise, this anthologised poem, appearing under the title, “White Man Beware!“, shows Ramsay, far from being a mere “bush poet”, was very much politically aware, standing “almost alone…in defence of the Australian aborigine”. It makes me rethink the reference to smoking in her poem below: maybe Ramsay was a lot more contemporary than this poem makes her appear.
She died as the result of a riding accident in June 1946 and was survived by two sons.
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“Neighbours Quarrel”, The Dubbo Liberal and Macquarie Advocate, 29 Mar 1912.
Ramsay, I. “White Man Beware!” The Sydney Morning Herald, 12 Apr 1941.
Elizabeth Lhuede has a PhD in Australian Poetry from Macquarie University. In 2012, she instigated the Australian Women Writers Challenge as a contribution to overcoming gender bias in the reviewing of works by Australian women. More recently she has focused on bringing to light the life and works of forgotten Australian women writers.
What an interesting woman Elizabeth. I like the question you pose about her!
I also appreciate your introduction to our project, and the particularly challenges we face this year, and how that will affect our choices or how we present our chosen women! I agree that “there’s an honesty of simply putting out there what we find, rather than curating the material”, because to some degree we would also like others to curate for themselves what we find, wouldn’t we?
Thanks, Sue. I was inspired by your comments last month, so credit to go to you! And yes, better to put out whatever’s there and let our readers decide.
I wondered if that was partly behind it but you put it so eloquently, which I appreciate.