Surrealist Poetics in Australian Poetry

This dissertation is comprised of two components: a critical thesis and a creative response in the form of a poetry collection. The thesis seeks to identify and chart surrealism’s ongoing influence within Australian poetry and literary history: starting with Angry Penguins journal of the 1940s; followed by the radical renewal of style in selected figures of the Generation of ’68 of the seventies and eighties; and the close study of individual poets of the contemporary period. My own poetry manuscript, Ultraviolet, supplements this thesis and continues its traditions, as a contemporary example immersed in surrealist aesthetics and literary techniques.