The Australian Poetic Republic

Not so far in the future, suggests Ian McEwan in his novel The Child In Time, Britain hopes to be self-sufficient in wood. With his novel scarcely embarked on its career, McEwan’s wheeze about self-sufficiency in wood has already entered the vocabulary of political debate, as a paradigm case of supposed folly: Thatcherite economics reduced to, or revealed as, absurdity. The idea that Australia can be self-sufficient in poetry ought surely by now to have attained the same status, as an example of how not to think about the relationship of literature and nationhood. But the idea goes on looking more plausible instead of less.