Gwen Harwood and James McAuley

“We have one day, only one,

But more than enough to refresh us.”

      Gwen Harwood, At Mornington

May 14

Ken Parker on Gwen Harwood and

James McAuley

Thank God for letters! I mean epistles and written by hand. Thank God for Gwen Harwood’s letters, for their preservation and their publication. Through her letters I found James McAuley again. I had loved his poetry and those hymns he wrote in the 1960s, but I had lost him. In recent times he has been successfully hidden by the drama of the Ern Malley hoax and his association with Bob Santamaria and the Democratic Labour Party. Gwen Harwood’s view of him, expressed in her letters, enabled me to find McAuley again – the poet of deep faith, who sees the potential of Australia and Australians, while ridiculing the littleness of our thinking.

 As I rediscover the poet McAuley, so I am led to look again at his contemporary, Gwen Harwood, whose poetry has lasted so well. I am intrigued by her writing, so strong, so clear and reflecting her courage and her believing. Though Harwood and McAuley were good companions on a 1970’s poetry tour, their lives and their work offer a most interesting contrast.

Ken Parker lives in Mornington and walks daily to Fishermen’s Beach, which inspired Gwen Harwood’s poem. Ken was once the priest at St. Peter’s Mornington where the poet’s brother Fr John McAuley had recently been the vicar.