John Blight

John Blight Poems

John Blight Biography

John Blight was an Australian poet. Blight was of Cornish origin, his ancestors arrived in South Australia on the Lisander, in 1851. In the 1987 recording, John Blight, he describes his Cornish background and its influence on his style. Biography Born in Unley, South Australia on 30 July 1913, Blight was educated at Brisbane State High School. During the Great Depression in Australia he tramped the Queensland coast looking for work. In 1939 he became an accountant in Bundaberg, Queensland, and after World War II a part-owner of timber mills in the Gympie region. He took up full-time writing in 1973. John Blight has received numerous awards, including the Dame Mary Gilmore Medal, Grace Leven Prize for Poetry, The Patrick White Literary Award and the Christopher Brennan Award. He died in 1995.)

The Best Poem Of John Blight

Mangrove

I saw its periscope in the tide;
its torpedo-seed seeking the soft side
of the island, the grey mud-bank.
And, where it touched, it seemed the land sank
with its tree exploding from water; the green
mangroves' fountainhead of leaves bursting, seen
like a mushroom-top of detritus and spray.
Today, in my boat, at the close end of the bay,
I saw its dark devastations; islet and spit
sunk in the flat high tide. Where these war-seeds it,
gaps of horizon and sea; then trees….gaps….trees
…..like men on a flushed foredeck. No ease:
the drab olive-green swarming everywhere;
troops of mangroves, uniform everywhere.

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