Gwen Harwood Selected Poetry Study Guide

Language Form and Style

Symbolism and Motif

Many of Harwood's prescribed poems are stylistically grounded in a symbolic focal point. Harwood's symbols often represent a dichotomy, such as fragility and destruction, innocence and corruption, or the past and the present. The use of symbolism and motif may be considered to construct the meditative framework of Harwood's writing. Examples include:

• The floral motif in The Violets which reflects the temporal beauty of past memories that are confronted with the harsh realities of the present environment.
• The owl motif in Father and Child which explores the natural progression in the human understanding of mortality.

Poetic Introspection and Mediation

Harwood crafts a poetic voice that may be interpreted as attempting to reckon with childhood idealisation and the realities of adulthood. Many of the prescribed works include a reference to the speaker's formative experiences that are contrasted with their present circumstances. This may be interpreted as a poetic reckoning of the emotional tensions that arise when our preconceptions of the world are challenged through lived experience. Examples include:

• The speaker's changing perceptions of the coastal landscape in At Mornington, which may be interpreted as a mediation between life and death.
• The speaker's mediation on the limits of language in Beyond Metaphor, which may be interpreted as an acceptance of emotional abstraction and the elements of our human experience that transcend the capacity to be rhetorically expressed.

Allusion

Harwood's poetry often contains biblical allusions which may be interpreted as a way to contemplate inherited moral understandings against the reality of adult life. The use of biblical allusion may be considered a means of defining tensions between moral idealisation and human imperfection, establishing the impetus for the speaker's internal conflict between the past and the present.

The Common Module Rubric

Published by the New South Wales Education Standards Authority (NESA)

Individual and collective human experiences

Harwood represents human experiences that include, but are not limited to:

• Self-Growth: emotional and moral maturation achieved through experience
• Mortality: interactions with it and evolving understandings of it
• Self-Reflection: explicit consideration of the role that formative experiences play in the construction of our identity and worldviews

Emotions and qualities related to these experiences

Harwood represents human emotions and qualities including, but not limited to:

• Loss: of moral perceptions, places, and people
• Love: parental relationships, connections to places and objects
• Introspection: the value of self-questioning in better understanding the processes involved in the construction of oneself

Emotional, intellectual, physical, cultural and lived experiences

• Emotional Experiences: family and maturation
• Intellectual Experiences: cognitive contemplations and acceptance of mortality
• Physical Experiences: the power of place and time
• Cultural Experiences: the inadvertent implications of cultural assumptions on one's identity
• Lived Experiences: the expansion of one's values and worldviews over time

Identity, culture, acceptance and growth, invite the readers to see the world differently, and challenge assumptions

• Identity: its construction through formative experiences and important connections
• Culture: the way in which one may self-locate themselves among broader expectations
• Acceptance and Growth: acceptance of mortality in our human experience and a growth in valuing transience

Tension between agency and conformity

Harwood represents tensions between one's own moral agency and the way that time can demand sudden shifts in perspective. Many of the prescribed poems confront a conflict between the speaker's moral self-perceptions and the emotionally demanding nature of reality. This creates a conflict between the way individuals may choose to see the world and the way they must evolve over time.

Paradoxes in human motivation and behaviour

The Paradox of Time:

• The past inadvertently shapes our interpretation of the present.
• Humans may need to reflect back in time to understand the experiences involved in their current self-perceptions.

Harwood explores both the destructive and restorative nature of time.

Poetry Summary

The Glass Jar

Content summary

This poem takes place over the course of one night. A young child's candle in a glass jar is extinguished, and they are confronted with the isolative and intimidating nature of darkness. The young child seeks parental respite but is morally challenged when witnessing the parental relationship.

Analytical summary

The Glass Jar is the first prescribed poem. Harwood explores childhood psychology through an interrogation of the moral delineation between lightness and darkness. The child's confrontations over the nighttime fracture their self-perceptions of morality. This may be considered a formative experience in the speaker's emotional and moral maturation, illustrating how our self-perception of moral righteousness changes over time.

The Violets

Content summary

This poem oscillates between the speaker's present interactions with a field of violets and a formative childhood memory. The poem opens in a field of violets before returning to the course of one childhood night.

Analytical summary

The Violets may be considered a conceptual progression in this selected suite of Harwood's poetry. Harwood fractures the chronological divide between past and present experiences to illustrate how our formative years can shape personal worldviews. The retrospective reconstruction of the speaker's childhood memory explores the conflict between idealised perceptions of life and the reality of loss.

At Mornington

Content summary

This poem moves through past, present, and future perspectives on mortality. The poem opens on the coastal landscape of Mornington. The speaker explores their understanding of mortality through various degrees of life experience.

Analytical summary

At Mornington may be considered an elegiac representation of the way that our past, present, and future interact to shape our sense of self. Harwood explores changing perceptions of loss that are focalised through the coastal landscape in a symbolic gesture to the nature of change in our human experience.

Father and Child, I and II

Content summary

This diptych poem explores a child's natural progression in their understanding of mortality. The poem opens with a childhood act of violence. The second part of this poem is set several years later and explores emotional maturation through the speaker's impending loss of their father.

Analytical summary

Father and Child may be interpreted as an illustration of emotional maturation through lived experience. The speaker's initial naivety is sharply contrasted by the emotional weight of their father's impending passing. The shift in personal perceptions of mortality may be considered an interrogation into the role of formative relationships and the impact of loss.

A Valediction

Content summary

A valediction is defined as an act of farewell. Harwood’s speaker farewells their lover through a series of classic literary allusions, namely a distinct intertextual connection to John Donne’s A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

Analytical summary

A Valediction may be interpreted as a speaker’s meta-physical reckoning with the experience of love and loss. The speaker challenges a liminal space between life and death through various means: rationalising it through the aesthetic qualities of Donne’s poetry, transcending it through the use of psychedelic drugs, casualising love with the reference to Lou Salome.

Beyond Metaphor

Content summary

This poem explores the limits of written language in expressing vivid emotional experiences. The speaker uses various distinguished cultural references to consider the role of representation in understanding our lived experiences.

Analytical summary

Beyond Metaphor may be interpreted as a meta-poetic reflection on Harwood's purpose as poet. The speaker's contemplation about the role of representation arguably reflects that human emotions can sometimes transcend rhetorical rationalisation. The use of various distinguished classical allusions may be considered a way to define the limits of language, suggesting the true value of lived experience may lie in emotional resonance and not representation.

Sharpness of Death

Content summary

The Sharpness of Death interrogates different frameworks through which individuals may come to reconcile with loss. It is structured as a quadripartite poem with each section offering a different understanding of death as an experience.

Analytical summary

Sharpness of Death proposes that individuals can learn to reckon with the experience of loss through different means; considering its profound personal impact, exacting aesthetic mastery over it, or enacting existentialist philosophy and ontological plurality to frame death not as an ending but as an alternate form of being .

Essay Questions

Module Specific: Texts and Human Experiences

1. How has the exploration of human experiences in your prescribed text enhanced your understanding of paradoxes in human motivation and behaviour? In your response make close reference to your prescribed text.
2. To what extent does the composer of your prescribed text explore the power of human emotions in shaping experiences? In your response make close reference to your prescribed text.
3. Evaluate how the study of your prescribed text has offered insights into the way collective human experiences promote acceptance and growth. In your response make close reference to your prescribed text.
4. In what ways does the composer of your prescribed text reflect tensions between agency and conformity in our individual human experiences? In your response make close reference to your prescribed text.
5. Texts reflect how the interconnection between our qualities, emotions, motivations, and behaviours shape human experiences. To what extent is this statement true of your prescribed text? In your response make close reference to your prescribed text.

Text Specific: Gwen Harwood, Selected Poetry

1. Evaluate how Harwood's representation of emotional experiences offers insights into the intersection between time and loss. In your response make close reference to your prescribed text.
2. To what extent does Harwood's poetry represent the individual and collective nature of growth? In your response make close reference to your prescribed text.
3. How does Harwood shape imagery and symbolism in her poetry to challenge our assumptions about the paradox of time? In your response make close reference to your prescribed text.
4. Harwood explores the relationship between our past and present, enriching the way we understand self-acceptance. To what extent does this statement reflect your understanding of the human experiences represented in Gwen Harwood's poetry? In your response make close reference to your prescribed text.
5. How has your study of Gwen Harwood's poetry invited you to reflect personally on the nature of maturity? In your response make close reference to your prescribed text.

Essay Model and Scaffold

Introduction: Scaffold and Modelled Example

Thesis

Address the question through a clear and conceptual argument.

Gwen Harwood's poetry challenges audience assumptions about the nature of time in our human experience through suggesting that it is an active constituent in the construction of one's identity and not merely a chronological measure.

Why it works

• Specifically references the prescribed text
• Uses key language from the question
• Conceptualises the key question language into an argument about time, identity, and experience

Elaborate

Expand on the line of argument by explicitly linking it to the concepts and features of your prescribed text.

In particular, Harwood's The Violets (1975) offers a poetic mediation between the past and present through symbolically exploring….

Harwood further challenges audience assumptions about the transient nature of time in our human experiences in her diptych poem Father and Child (1975). The poet uses the two-part structure to invite audience reconsideration of the way that formative experiences ultimately resolve existential confrontations.

Why it works

• Specifically references the form of the text to address the 'how' aspect of the question
• Links the macro function of form to audience purpose
• Elaborates on the conceptual response to outline the order of argument in the response

Link

Demonstrate awareness of the module's focus by connecting your argument to both the question and key module directives.

In this way, Harwood presents time not as a fixed chronological construct but a dynamic force that influences moral and emotional maturation.

Why it works

• Incorporates key module terminology that is relevant to the question
• Concludes the introduction by making a specific and arguable claim about the question

Body Paragraph: Scaffold and Modelled Example

Sub-Argument

Present a clear and single idea that progresses the argument of your thesis. This may be universal or text specific.

Self-reflection of past experiences often provides individuals with a way to make sense of their current worldviews, exposing time as a paradoxical force of destruction and restoration.

Why it works

• Argues key thesis concepts: memory, the past, emotional maturation
• Establishes a link back to the question

Explanation

Connect a macro-feature to the sub-argument. Outline how the form of the text actively supports the sub-argument.

Harwood uses the retrospective reconstruction of the speaker's childhood memories, triggered by the symbolic presence of the violets, to make sense of their parent's implied passing. The structural interactions between the past and present that provide the speaker solace and position the audience to consider how time influences our self-perceptions of loss.

Why it works

• Demonstrates a specific awareness of form: retrospection, reconstruction, non-linearity
• Connects aspects of form to the meaning created within the text
• Explains its relevance to the question

Example

Identify a technique specific to form. Provide the evidence of that technique. Explain the purpose.

In the opening of The Violets, Harwood creates an elegiac atmosphere through the use of pathetic fallacy, “It is dusk and cold. I kneel to pick / frail melancholy flowers…” (Harwood, 2001) where the fragility of the floral imagery mirrors that of human life.

Note: more than one example is required in an essay.

Why it works

• Provides a micro-analysis of the broader structural features addressed
• Uses a specific technique
• Uses a specific and accurate example

Link

Demonstrate the relationship between your evidence, the sub-argument, and the question.

The floral motif alludes to the introspective focus of the poem and creates a poignant symbol where the past and present intersect, thus challenging our understanding about the fixed nature of time in our lived experiences.

Why it works

• Expands on the evidence provided to create a clear relationship between the text, its meaning, and the question

Conclude

Reinforce the topic and its relevance to the question.

It is through the experience of emotional consolation that the audience are encouraged to acknowledge that time both disrupts and sustains an individual's connections to memory.

Why it works

• Reinforces the main argument in reference to the question

Conclusion: Scaffold and Modelled Example

Restate Thesis

Readdress the key elements of your argument as outlined in the response.

Harwood challenges audience assumptions about the construction of one's identity in our human experience and poetically explores the dynamism of past experiences.

Why it works

• Restates thesis concepts without repeating the introduction word-for-word

Reoutline Key Elements

Readdress how those key concepts answer the question asked.

The poet distinctively manipulates elements of linearity, structure, and motif to draw together the speaker's past and present experiences, illuminating the intimate ways people often reconcile their present circumstances through self-reflection.

Why it works

• Reconnects the argument's key elements directly to the question

Reinforce Judgement

Reinforce your position in relation to the question.

Ultimately, through engagement with Harwood's selected poetry, responders are invited to expand their worldviews on the nature of time and its relationship with self-perception in our personal and shared human experiences.

Why it works

• Leaves the marker with a final, confident statement of judgement

Works cited

All works cited in this document are based on Australian Fair Dealing copyright laws as of 2023–2024.

Harwood, G., & Kratzmann, G. C. (2001). Selected Poems. Penguin Books Australia.