Chris let me known that it is the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Australia’s greatest hymn writer of his era, James McAuley. When you are looking through old hymn books looking for Australian hymns, he is the standout. It is a rare thing indeed for a gifted poet to turn his hand to hymn texts.
The Catholic Standard has a detailed article in the current issue, especially relating to his time in Tasmania.
Even so, a lot is left out of the article that is worth noting. McAuley was an outstanding poet well before he was a hymn writer. With Harold Stewart, he orchestrated the Ern Malley hoax, the irony being that not all the “fake” poetry was bad, although “Petit Testament” should have been a giveway.
Nicole Moore in the Macquarie Pen Anthology of Australian Literature had this to say about McAuley:
James McAuley rose to prominence in Australian poetry as one of the two perpetrators of the Ern Malley hoax, drawing on his training in symbolism and suurealism to create a plausible oeuvre for Malley, in order to debunk modernism. His own first volume “Under Aldebran” (1946) demonstated his skills in both satire and symbolism, which were turned to more specific ends in his middle years with several faith-inspired volumes. His late poetry evidence a new phase, in four collections which were more humane and worldly, and displayed a detailed appreciation of the Tasmanian landscape.
After his conversion to Catholicism in 1952, McAuley became a dominating conservative figure in Australian cultural life. He was the founding editor of “Quadrant”, the magazine of the Australian Congress for Cultural Freedom, which controversially sourced its funding from the CIA for a period. “The End of Modernity: Essays on literature, art and culture” (1959) argued for a return to spiritualism and divine inspiration on poetry, while elsewhere McAuley proselytised more broadly. Appointed as reader in English at the University of Tasmania in 1961, he later assumed the chair and contributed significant scholarly work to the field of Australian literary studies.
For a glimpse at his greatness this is a prescient poem called, “In the Twentieth Century”, from 1969’s collection, Surprises of the Sun.
Christ, you walked on the sea,
But cannot walk in a poem,
Not in our century.There’s something deeply wrong
Either with us or with you.
Our bright loud world is strongAnd better in some ways
Than the old haunting kingdoms:
I don’t reject our days.But in you I taste bread,
Freshness, the honey of being,
And rising from the dead:Like yolk in a warm shell—
Simplicities of power,
And water from a well.We live like diagrams
Moving on a screen.
Somewhere a door slamsShut, and emptiness spreads.
Our loves are processes
Upon foam-rubber beds.Our speech is chemical waste;
The words have a plastic feel,
An antibiotic taste.And yet we dream of song
Like parables of joy.
There’s something deeply wrong.Like shades we must drink blood
To find the living voice
That flesh once understood.
His hymns with settings by Richard Connolly are collected in the Year of Grace, available at Willow.