Poetry is a way of expressing emotions, values, concerns and lessons. Poets often use poetry as a form of protest, to reshape the audience’s consciousness around particular social issues. An act of protest involves giving voice to the voiceless and objecting to social or environmental injustices. Poets like Les Murray and Robert Frost give voice to nature, protesting against the way we seem to skate across life, never stopping to appreciate the silent beauty of our environment. The Australian poet Oodgeroo Noonuccal and songwriter Paul Kelly replicate this idea by protesting in favour of the social minorities whose calls for equality are drowned out by the dominant voice. In turn, Gwen Harwood and Wilfred Owen challenge this dominant voice,…show more content… In Municipal Gum, Noonuccal uses the gumtree trapped “in the city street” as a metaphor for Indigenous Australians, who have been mistreated and controlled by the dominant voice throughout history. Noonuccal likens the tree to a “poor cart horse,” describing the horse being physically “strapped and buckled” into its harness in the same way the tree is ‘buckled’ into the “hard bitumen”. Like Frost and Murray, Noonuccal protests our neglect for nature (in this case the horse and tree), but, by referring to the tree as a “fellow citizen” in her closing line, she extends the metaphor to include the speaker. Traditionally, Indigenous Australians have an affinity with nature and the land, and so we read “what have they done to us?” as a figure of aporia: the speaker is wondering what society has done to the marginalised (and therefore voiceless) Indigenous Australians. Kelly also gives voice to injustices in society through pieces such as Everything is Turning to White, which he uses to protest violence against women. By describing how the men wedge the “body of a young girl” who had been “strangled to death and molested” between “two rocks”, Kelly equates the girl to the silent victims of domestic violence in Australian society. The abused girl is unable speak for herself, and the fact that the men push her aside – out of sight – reflects the dominant perception that…show more content… In Suburban Sonnet, Harwood presents the controversial reality of motherhood, and contradicts the stereotypical role of women. Harwood frequently uses enjambment to reveal the chaos that accompanies motherhood, something that is often overlooked by society. By using the metaphor of “a pot” physically ‘boil[ing] over” into the next line, Harwood challenges the traditional image of the mother who finds fulfilment in household duties. The mother’s piano “practice” is interrupted by the overflowing pot, prompting her to “[rush] to the stove” and “[scour] the crusted milk”. Harwood illustrates the mother’s loss of control over her life and suggests the “milk” of motherhood has dried up and “crusted,” leaving her existence “stale” and desiccated. This idea is further explored in Harwood’s In the Park, where the subject expresses how her children “have eaten [her] alive.” In this piece, Harwood uses a caesura to draw attention to the “departing smile” of the man that the subject “loved once”, protesting the way he, like wider society, “passes by” without hearing what she says “to the wind.” In the same way Harwood protests female gender roles, Owen reacts to the perception of young males in his society as glorious, masculine soldiers, protesting against wartime propaganda to present a more accurate account of war’s atrocities. The opening lines of Dulce et Decorum Est combine a
