Recession poetry

I've been wondering about the poets who sing the songs of the hard times.

The Australian poet, Bruce Dawe, comes to mind. He writes about ordinary people in the context of historical events and the society they live in.

'Sometimes Gladness', the collection of Dawe's poems written between 1954 and 1992, has been studied by thousands of high school students in their senior years at school and it's one of my favourite books of poetry.

The poem, 'Drifters' was written in 1968 when Australia was supposedly in an era of full employment. The people in this poem have very little but there is also a certain richness in their lives in the sense of close family connections and connection with the natural world. How recognisable are Dawe's drifters in Australian society today?

Drifters

One day soon he'll tell her it's time to start packing,
and the kids will yell 'Truly?' and get wildly excited for no reason,
and the brown kelpie pup will start dashing about, tripping everyone up,
and she'll go out to the vegetable-patch and pick all the green tomatoes from the vines,
and notice how the oldest girl is close to tears because she was happy here,
and how the youngest girl is beaming because she wasn't.
And the first thing she'll put on the trailer will be the bottling-set she never unpacked from Grovedale,
and when the loaded ute bumps down the drive past the blackberry-canes with their last shrivelled fruit,
she won't even ask why they're leaving this time, or where they're heading for
- she'll only remember how, when they came here,
she held out her hands bright with berries,
the first of the season, and said,
'Make a wish, Tom, make a wish.'