Judith Wright Biography | Poet

Judith Wright (31 May 1915 – 26 June 2000) was an Australian poet.

Wright was born in Armidale, northern NSW, in the New England region, but spent much of her formative years in Brisbane and Sydney.

She is the author of several collections of poetry, including The Moving Image, Woman to Man, The Gateway, The Two Fires, Birds, The Other Half, and Shadow. Wright is also an acclaimed critic of Australian poetry, and a strong social advocate for the rights of Indigenous Australians.

Her work is noted for a keen focus on the Australian environment, which began to gain prominence in Australian art in the years following World War II. She deals with the relationship between settlers, Indigenous Australians and the bush, amongst other themes. Wright's aesthetic centers on the relationship between mankind and the environment, which she views as the catalyst for poetic creation. Her images characteristically draw from the Australian flora and fauna, yet contain a mythic substrata that probes at the poetic process, limitations of language, and the correspondence between inner existence and objective reality.

The 'Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts' in Brisbane's trendy Fortitude Valley is named after the famous Australian icon.

In June 2006 the Australian Electoral Commission announced that the new federal electorate in Queensland to be created for the 2007 election will be named Wright in honour of her life as a "poet and in the areas of arts, conservation and indigenous affairs in Queensland and Australia"