Forms of Memory in Post-colonial Australia

Abstract

there are many forms of memory in post-colonial Australia, and many kinds of haunting. This paper investigates the poetry of contemporary Indigenous poets Sam Wagan Watson and Tony Birch, and reads the script of the Federal Government’s February 2008 Apology to the Stolen Generations, asking how and why the nation should be haunted – historically and imaginatively - into the future.

Keywords

• there are many forms of memory in post-colonial Australia
• and many kinds of haunting. This paper investigates the poetry of contemporary Indigenous poets Sam Wagan Watson and Tony Birch
• and reads the script of the Federal Government’s February 2008 Apology to the Stolen Generations
• asking how and why the nation should be haunted – historically and imaginatively - into the future.
• memory
• haunting
• poetry