Poetry and the national psyche. (Letters).

SIR: A journalist in the Age told us last October that "The place for poetry in the national psyche is negligible", and now my colleague, Geoff Page, has written an article for Canberra's Muse magazine on whether Poetry In Australia has a future, an article which seeks in part to controvert the Age's assertion.

Poetry's negligible place in the national psyche is incontrovertible. The same is true for the place of real music, architecture, most types of visual art, and a diversity of other human activities.

But then, the moment journalism discloses what the national psyche actually contains--much sport, the chimeric playing fields of "fair go", much sentimentality concerning The Bush, Ned Kelly the Good, some war stories which grow yearly more unstable on their historical foundations--what self-respecting poet would wish to be seen inside such a national psyche at all?

And as soon as we look at what the national psyche actually is--a phantasm invented and sustained by journalists to entrench their own indefensible claim to be in-the-know as to what The People really are--again, I suggest, no self-respecting poet would wish to be seen anywhere near the national ...