“Kangaroo” and the Spirit of Australia

“Kangaroo” is Lawrence’s only Australian poem and was first published in 1923 in Birds, Beasts and Flowers, a collection of 48 poems. In her memoir, Jessie Chambers wrote: “a living vibration passed between” Lawrence and “wild things,” ¹ and in “Kangaroo,” as in many of Lawrence’s poems about the natural world, there is a remarkably rich empathy between author and subject.