Kangaroo (poem)

"Kangaroo" is an 1819 poem by English-born Australian author Barron Field.

It was first published in the author's collection First Fruits of Australian Poetry, the first book of poetry published in Australia.The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature edited by Wilde, Hooton and Andrews, 2nd edition, 1986, p259. Accessed: 14 February 2026

Synopsis

The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature states that the poem "depicts the animal as an Antipodean oddity, an anomaly of the animal world yet typical of the equally strange Australian landscape.".

Critical reception

The Oxford Literary History of Australia states: "Field's poetry laments the lack of either classical or familiar poetic associations in the alien environment, a lament that was mocked at the time and has been since for its pretension, but which has also been read as a witty parody of colonial literary pretentiousness."The Oxford Literary History of Australia edited by Bruce Bennett and Jennifer Strauss, 1st edition, 1998, p28. Accessed: 14 February 2026

In The Cambridge Companion to Australian Poetry Michael Farrell noted that "The historical precedence of "The Kangaroo," as well as in anxiety over Australia's rhyme with failure as an analogy to the colonial enterprise itself, marks it as a benchmark poem for subsequent settler poems."The Cambridge Companion to Australian Poetry edited by Ann Vikery, Cambridge University Press, 2024, "Chapter 4: Above and Below : Sublime and Gothic Relations in Australian Poetry" by Michael Farrell, pp. 77-88. Accessed: 14 February 2026

Publication history

After the poem's initial publication in First Fruits of Australian Poetry in 1819 it was reprinted as follows:

The Examiner (London, UK), 16 January 1820, p40 Geographical Memoirs on New South Wales edited by Barron Field, John Murray, 1825 The Gleaner, 26 April 1827 Once a Month, vol. 1 no. 4, 15 October 1884 An Animal Anthology edited by Hal Missingham, Shepherd Press, 1948 The Legend of the Coming of the First Kangaroo by Lindsay A. Dane and Barron Field, Truesdell Press, 1948 Bards in the Wilderness : Australian Colonial Poetry to 1920 edited by Adrian Mitchell and Brian Elliott, Nelson, 1970 A Treasury of Colonial Poetry, Currawong, 1982 The New Oxford Book of Australian Verse edited by Les Murray, Oxford University Press, 1986 Two Centuries of Australian Poetry edited by Mark O’Connor, Oxford University Press, 1988 The Poet's Discovery : Nineteenth Century Australia in Verse edited by Richard Douglas Jordan and Peter Pierce, Melbourne University Press, 1990 The Penguin Book of 19th Century Australian Literature edited by Michael Ackland, Penguin, 1993 Classic Australian Verse edited by Maggie Pinkney, Five Mile Press, 2001 Our Country : Classic Australian Poetry : From Colonial Ballads to Paterson & Lawson edited by Michael Cook, Little Hills Press, 2002 An Anthology of Australian Poetry to 1920 edited by John Kinsella, University of Western Australia Library, 2007 Two Centuries of Australian Poetry edited by Kathrine Bell, Gary Allen, 2007 The Penguin Anthology of Australian Poetry edited by John Kinsella, Penguin, 2009 Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature edited by Nicholas Jose, Kerryn Goldsworthy, Anita Heiss, David McCooey, Peter Minter, Nicole Moore, and Elizabeth Webby, Allen and Unwin, 2009

References