While in Australia doing some all important research into Australian Great War poetry, I could not go without visiting the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. Traditionally, the AWM has always been a favourite place for me to visit, but this visit was to be very special. While visiting my sister in Sydney, the two of us decide to drive to Canberra to do a little research. I should note here, that my sister has helped me a great deal in my research, and many things I could not have done without her help.
The process was not what I expected at first, but it became obvious that it was a good system. I wanted to look at what ever the AWM had in its archives on the poetry of the First World War, so I got onto their web-site and began searching for what ever I could find. After some time, I had developed a nice big list of things I believed would be of use.
The AWM required of me that I do two things; the first was to make an on-line reservation of the material I wanted to see, and the second was to let them know when I would be in the museum. I did all this after getting my user ID number, and then I waited for the approval email. Needless to say, when I got this email with all the green lights, so to speak, I was getting myself ready for the trip to Canberra.
I made a list of all the AWM codes I was going to be looking at; an example is Cordite Joe's code: 3DRL/6880. This entry produced several poems:
The Tale of a Night of Peril
Melbourne to Posieres
“Our Corporal”
The Stampede
Fiction
Our Q M
How I won my D.C.M
An Australian Hero – A Tragic Comedy
In France
The Foilers
Winifre & Co
To my girl
Joy
Others like Trooper Powell Monteney, AWM code, PR89/013, produced many poems:
Its searching beans but reap and plough
Those little sunburnt fingers
Those eyes like blue-spring water
Not eyes that are tranquil and quiet
C.B. (Confined to Barracks)
On Parade at Fraser’s Hill
English Girls
Dead Flowers
The Menin Road
Homing Heart
Love Beyond
Blue and Blue
Flowers
The Evening “Call”
You
My Dreams
For the Love of a Smile
Life and a Cigarette
The Lament
Winter Roses
A Dream
This is a Dreary Land
My Twilight Girl
Dead Faith
Fancy
Our Love
One Hour
Minstrels of the Bush
Hope
As you can see, there was much to look at and note. I could not have done the research in the time had my sister not been with me. We had just three days in the Capitol, and I wish I could do it all again. Cordite Joe and Trooper Powell Monteney are only two of the 22 or more poets we were looking at.
The day would begin with my sister and I going into the museum archives section down stairs. We were well equipped with our note books and pens (sorry, pencils, as no pens are allowed). I told the archivist that I was here and she went for my first batch of folders. We were only allowed three or four folders at a time, and some of the poets I was looking at had several folders. Much of the material was, while interesting, not so important for my research, so I had to keep the focus on the subject at hand. Otherwise we would never have got through the material.
As we read through the folders, some typed and others handwritten, we made what notes we thought useful and catalogued any poets and poems we came across. Sometimes, we even copied poetry be hand (no photos were allowed), and this turned out to be a good idea in retrospect, as the archive couldn't photocopy everything I asked them to. The process was that I would make formal requests for folders to be copied by the AWM archives, and they would do so over the next few weeks, pending copyright permissions and such like. The material they could copy, they would digitally put on a disc and post it to me. I was back in Poland by the time the disc arrived at my sister's house, and she sent it on to me.
So, the things we copied by hand, turned out to be some of the things the archives couldn't copy. There were a few other folders they couldn't copy, and I am still desperate to get my hands on them. It may mean another visit sometime in the future, but that will be too late for my thesis.
After each set of folders were finished, we asked the archivist for the next set, and slowly we made out way through two days of this. Of course, we had lunch in the museum and saw some of the exhibitions, but we were focused and did well. As we were doing all this research, I was thinking about the poets, of course, but I was also thinking about Charles Bean, who had the vision of the memorial's existence in the first place. I wondered what he would be thinking about this thesis and the work my sister and I were doing. I was convinced at the time, and I still am, that Bean, the chief editor of the Anzac Book, in which many Australian poets put pen to paper, would look on this work as something worthy of the very memorial he envisioned.
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