In the 1940's, Australia's literary scene was rocked by the discovery of a new Poet -- Ern Malley. These works came to light after his untimely death at age 25.
Here is the introduction to his collection of Poems as published by the Angry Penguins press:
Max Harris's response, written for the 1944 Angry Penguins as an introduction to Ern Malley's poems, The Darkening Ecliptic:The Miss Malley is Ern's sister. There is a website with Ern's Poetry and biography with photos and a painting of him by noted artist Sidney Nolan. Oh -- one last item. Ern was a literary hoax. Two conservative Australian Poets fabricated his work to mock the growing trend of Modernism. Great stuff!
Ern Malley prepared for his death quietly confident that he was a great poet, and that he would be known as such. He prepared his manuscript to that end � there was no ostentation nor the exhibitionism of the dying in the act. It was an act of calm controlled confidence. He treated death greatly, and as poetry, while undergoing the most fearful and debilitating nervous strain that a human being could possibly endure. He was dying at the age of 25 with Grave�s Disease.
Nobody had any idea that Ern Malley wrote poetry. For several years he was thought of simply as the young man who worked as a motor mechanic at Palmer�s Garage on Taverner�s Hill in Sydney, after leaving the Summer Hill Intermediate High School at the age of 14. When he turned 17 he went off alone to Melbourne, where little or nothing was known of his activities. He was said to have been living alone in a room in South Melbourne and earning his living peddling insurance policies for the National Mutual Life Assurance Company. He returned to Sydney where, after refusing to be operated upon, he died of Grave�s Disease. Even his sister, next of kin, did not know that he wrote. In Sydney he was known to possess only one book � Veblen�s "Theory of the Leisure Classes." That is all.Yet I am firmly convinced that this unknown mechanic and insurance peddler is one of the most outstanding poets that we have produced here.
Yet this is not based on any romantic reaction to the circumstances by which his poetry has come into possession, nor by the great artistic self-possession with which he treated his forthcoming death. It is the perfection and integration of his poetry. This brief study will, then, treat almost entirely of the quality and nature of his poetry.
But first I feel there is justification for completing the story of Ern Malley. Recently I was sent two poems from a Miss Ethel Malley, who wrote saying that they were found among her brother�s possessions after his death on July the 23rd, 1943. Someone suggested to her they might be of value and that she send them to me for an opinion. At this stage I knew nothing about the author at all, but I was immediately impressed that here was a poet of tremendous power, working through a disciplined and restrained kind of statement into the deepest wells of human experience. A poet, moreover, with cool, strong, sinuous feeling for language. I sent these poems to my co-editor, Mr. John Reed, and they were then shown to a number of people, most of whom, without any information about the author, bore out my opinion. Then, at my request, Miss Malley sent the complete MSS, along with the facts about her brother as she knew them.
