John Schumann and the Henry Lawson album

"... I was about 10 I reckon and I was transfixed by someone who could describe the Australian landscape exactly as I saw it -- and more importantly -- exactly as I felt it. This chance encounter sparked a lifelong interest in the life and work of Henry Lawson, culminating in 2005 in the recording of an album of songs drawn from his poems. A number of Australia’s finest musicians and singers joined me in the project, including Russell Morris, Mike Rudd, Rob Hirst, Shane Howard and Broderick Smith.

"Response to the album has been illuminating. In the three months since its release, the Lawson album has been received warmly and has been the subject of genuinely enthusiastic reviews and commentary. It has also been politely and, in some cases, pointedly ignored. A number of our nation’s newspapers gave the Lawson project terrific coverage. Our one national daily, on the other hand, found itself unable to do more than publish a dismissive little paragraph in a gossip column.

"The sad truth is that Lawson is great Australian writer whose name is widely known but whose work, generally, isn’t.

"Rather than literature, Australians are fixated on sport and reality TV ...

"We have so little regard for our own history and heritage that lots of us sit around watching formulaic reality crap on television thinking it’s an accurate reflection of who we are and what we are. If it is, God help us.

"In contrast -- and not that I have ever been a big fan of America -- Americans are generally more familiar with, and respectful of, their poets and writers than we are ..."
Perspective

So who was Henry Lawson?

See also The Louisa Lawson and Henry Lawson Chronology (five big pages)

[I have just written a novel about Henry Lawson and his remarkable mother and am now looking for an agent and publisher.]

Tagged: australian+literature, literature, bush+poetry, henry+lawson, history, australia, music, poetry