ENVIRONMENTAL MEMORY AND WAR TRAUMA IN JUDITH WRIGHT'S POEMS
DOI: https://doi.org/10.56815/IRJAHS/2026.V(2026)I1.13-17
Keywords:
Judith Wright, environmental memory, war trauma, ecocriticism, Australian poetry, landscape, colonial guilt, trauma theoryAbstract
Judith Wright is one of the most important voices in Australian literature, and what makes her poetry stand apart is not only its lyrical beauty but also its deep ethical weight. This paper examines how Wright uses the Australian landscape as something more than a scenic backdrop — she treats it as a living archive, a space that holds memory, grief, and the consequences of human violence. Drawing on selected poems, this study argues that Wright establishes a kind of 'environmental memory': the idea that the land itself bears witness to human trauma and carries its scars forward across time. The paper reads these poems through the lens of ecocriticism and trauma theory, drawing on the work of Lawrence Buell, Greg Garrard, and Cathy Caruth. Rather than treating these as separate frameworks, this study sees them as naturally intertwined in Wright's poetic vision, where ecological destruction and human suffering are never entirely separable.
