The sea will be there
John Blight's beachcombing days
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/qre.2017.32Keywords:
John Blight, poetry, 'A Beachcomber’s Diary', 'My Beachcombing Days', Sunshine Coast, sonnet form, seascapesAbstract
According to Judith Wright, John Blight’s best poems were about the sea. From the 1940s, when he lived around the Sunshine Coast, he wrote about the rhythms of life by the sea and about human relationships with the more than human world. In the 1960s, he published 180 sonnets in two volumes, A Beachcomber’s Diary and My Beachcombing Days. The sonnet form, he said, cut him down to size. This paper considers Blight’s work and its engagement with the littoral zone: the seascapes and ecology of the Sunshine Coast. It attempts to hear the sea’s voices — muffled, indistinct — and to illuminate Blight’s ideas about its alien nature.
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