Un-Australian Activities?: Mary Gilmore’s Versions from the Spanish

Abstract

Somewhere around 1915-18, Mary Gilmore worked on assembling a collection of poems translated from, or based on, Spanish originals. The Mitchell Library hold two typescript copies of a set of 27 poems, entitled FROM THE SPANISH; these correspond closely with a set held in the Australian National Library and located somewhat whimsically among undated single poems filed under the initial letter of their first line.' Labelled 'Spanish' in Gilmore's hand, this set is textually identical with FROM THE SPANISH, but omits two poems and adds one, but only one, of the five poems that constitute the major difference between FROM THE SPANISH and a third Mitchell MS, called VERSIONS & IMITATIONS. This latter MS specifies those poems which come from South American writers and provides an introductory Note, variants of which were printed as a note to some of the eight poems actually published--in the Women's Page of the Worker, edited, of course, by Gilmore herself.