An unexpected link
with the " greatest
literary hoax of
the 20th Century "
is contained in
the rare books
collection at the
Eddie Koiki Mabo
Library , James Cook University, Townsville. It
is a slim volume
of poems- Night Flight
and Sunrise - by
the late South Australian author and publisher , Geoffrey Dutton,
when he was
a pilot officer in
the RAAF during
WW11. Published in 1944
by John Reed and
Max Harris , it was Dutton’s first book
of poems , he
just 21 , and
shows him in
flying kit, see
right. The collection
included his poems
from A Comment
and the Angry
Penguins literary publication.
Of particular
note is the
introductory statement by avant-garde
poet and critic, Max Harris , who
praised Dutton’s maturity in
style and said
five poems were " far and away
the finest things
I have encountered in Australia, and although the
idiom arrived at is
highly individual, at times
esoteric , they possess the
fervency and sensitivity that
characterise the best
of D. B.
Kerr and Ern
Malley."
Kerr , a
fine poet," close to the border
of genius", at the Adelaide
University Arts Association on April 7, 1940 had
been a founding member of the
literary magazine Angry Penguins
. Kerr
and Harris were editors
and P.G. Pfeiffer and
Dutton subeditors of the new
publication, its patron C.R. Jury . It
replaced the Student Union
publication Phoenix ,
closed because it had
upset conservatives at the
university. In those
days , it was said
Adelaide University was Australia’s
literary frontier .
War intervened .
Kerr, 23, described by
Harris for an American journal in Commentary on Australian Poetry,
as "the pre-eminent poet of the Australian modernists movement,"
joined up and
was killed in air
action in New Guinea
. Pfeiffer , 28, flew in the famous RAAF
461 Squadron, a maritime patrol
group using Short Sunderland flying boats, under the control of the RAF, which
operated in Europe and over the
Atlantic , carried out transport flights
to Gibraltar, anti-submarine missions
and supported the Normandy invasion ; he was
also killed in
action.
Dutton was
lucky to survive
a plane crash in
New Guinea late in the war . Angry
Penguins moved to
Melbourne under the editorship of
Harris , a corporal in the war
,who did not get on with
superiors , spent quite some time digging latrines . He
formed a
close business relationship
with John and
Sunday Reed of
the Heide Group of modernists . Harris correctly
predicted Dutton would be a
powerful force in contemporary
Australian literature and
described this first book
of poems as yet
another sign of the
vital creative movement taking
place in this
country, a movement the implications of
which extended beyond
the shores of
a country which might well have
been a cultural backwater.
Unfortunately, Ern Malley ,
praised so highly
by Harris in the
introduction to Dutton's book , never existed
and was an
outrageous hoax pulled
off by two non-combatant Australian soldiers in
the Army’s Victoria Barracks, Melbourne, in October 1943. They were
Lieutenant James McAuley and Corporal Harold Stewart, Sydney poets , who
disliked modern poetry in
general and hated Max
Harris of Angry
Penguins. NEXT : Unusual Queensland souvenirs of Dutton
Dynasty
and Ern Malley Hoax .
