Bobbi Sykes And Beggar's Choice

An Akubra hat clutched by roughened hands, boots worn to the sole and a distinct, robust figure silhouetted against a crimson sky. The 1900s considerably shaped the face of Australian literature, which presented iconic ballads and romanticised poems of heroic Bushmen taming the elements, which we recognise today. While these pioneers were at the forefront of Australia’s identity, one area often overlooked is the perspective of the Indigenous. Now envision land, your land, soil on which you grew, learnt about your origins, seized by foreign men. This wasn’t a peaceful integration, it invasion day. Two prominent poems that explore this view are Ambrose by Roberta “Bobbi” Sykes and Beggar’s Choice by Bruce Dawe. Sykes narrates the disruption

of an Aboriginal boy’s upbringing, Ambrose, which leads to his eventual death while Dawe comically represents the Anglo-Saxons and their treatment of the Indigenous. While both protest the central idea of the vile maltreatment of Aboriginals, differences in the style of poetic devices alter the overall tone of the poems.

Roberta Sykes, of African American and Aboriginal descent, was a heavy activist at the height of America’s Civil Rights Movement and the 1972 Indigenous Land Rights protests in Canberra. These events inspired her to write Ambrose, a second person narrative poem. From the beginning, a melancholic tone is established as the narrator says, “They say you took your life with your own hand but… I see other hands in the taking of your life”. This alerts us to understand that other factors contributed to Ambrose’s decision to suicide. On the other hand, Dawe’s Beggars’ Choice provides an alternative perspective. Dawe is a well-known social poet, whose works feature several controversial topics, which support the Aboriginals despite his Caucasian ethnicity. His interest in the Mabo vs Queensland High Court case fuelled him to write this poem. Written from an oppressive Australian point of view, the title reinforces the cynical nature of the poem; a play on words of the common phrase: beggars can’t be choosers. This contradiction shows how the beggars, in this case the aboriginals, were not able to voice their opinion as the whites snatched and foraged their land.

Imagery is a key poetic device shared by the poems. Symbolic of the people that indirectly led to his death, hands are a powerful point of reference throughout Ambrose. Repetition of this symbol may appear explicit, as hands “reached out to tear off strips”, but also powerfully appeals to a sense of touch. The line alludes to a boy being slowly ripped to his core, a metaphor of the cruel treatment of the Aboriginal after British settlement. In Dawe’s poem, imagery in lines like, “we’ll thump your blackness blue”, victimises the oppressed, as if their protests can be silenced with violence. The onomatopoeic word, “thump”, creates a sickening sound as the reader can actually hear the whipping. Consequently, we are positioned to comprehend the enormity of the mistreatment of Aboriginals at the hands of the white Australians.

A poignant moment is the juxtaposition in the photograph of Ambrose and his mother, revealed in a simple parallel sentence. “Behind you she stood, your bottle in one hand her bottle in the other.” This image couples the innocence of a baby, an untainted soul, with a mother, the nurturing figure sadly corrupted by alcohol, which communicates the havoc wreaked upon Australia’s first inhabitants. Irony is also utilised as Sykes states, “You lived more a uniformed life contained by uniformed men than in the free air of which you often spoke”. This allows us to grasp the dark reality of Ambrose, contrasting the freedom of their lives liberated by walk abouts and deep-rooted connections to the land with the stringent conformity the British imposed. Similarly, irony in Dawe’s poem in the line, “bad laws go heavily armed with masks of gold”, highlights the egotistical motives and absurd nature of laws administered by the English. Dawe deliberately implies it is a façade designed to deceive.

Furthermore, language choices in Beggars’ Choice reinforce the satirical undertone in the lines, “We’ll let you choose, there’s syphilis, booze, trachoma… long sentence for a short crime…all there just for you”.

This persuades us to reflect on how these messages tainted the natural practices of the original custodians. This is further supported by a rhyme pattern, which facilitates the flow of words. However the layout of Ambrose forces us to slow down and recognise the police brutality and institutional abuse that ensued.
So, on Australia Day we often neglect the very different experience of Indigenous people whose land was invaded and cultural integrity stolen by ignorant ideologies of white supremacy. Their perspectives expressed through literature powerfully protests the silenced voices. From evaluation, Dawe’s Beggars’ Choice elicits a colloquial and relaxed mood, as the message is indirect and addressed in a satirical manner, while Sykes’s Ambrose is direct; its shorter sharper sentences underlining its provocative tone. Ultimately, this alters the mood of the poems even though both share the theme of the loss of tradition, depreciation of life and the social ramifications foisted on our indigenous people by their white

masters.