Samuel Wagan Watson's "Love Poems and Death Threats" teachers' review for NSW HSC 2027-2028

Brief description and distinctive features

Teaching these poems cannot commence until Term 4 2026 and will be first examined in 2027.

Wagon Watson’s poems are set for study in 2027-2028 in Year 12 in Advanced and Standard Texts and human experiences.

Samuel Wagon Watson grew up listening to his father’s speeches and writings. Sam now lives with his Finnish wife and sons just around the corner from where he grew up. Indeed, with his seventeen-year-old son Sam shares a love of film, animation, music, literature and comics. 

In an interview for Poetry International Sam talks about books that have inspired him: 

“I keep a tattered copy of On the Road in my bag and it’s accompanied me all over the world.  When I need to escape, I just open it to any page and begin reading. And you know, it’s not great writing but it captures the moments of the road perfectly!” 

The interview is very valuable to glean more about Sam’s life.

Sam Wagan Watson was the winner of the 1999 David Unaipon award for emerging Indigenous writers with his first collection of poetry Of Muse, Meandering and Midnight. Since then, he has written more collections: Itinerant Blues (2001), Hotel Bone (2001), Smoke Encrypted Whispers (2004), which won the 2005 New South Wales Premier’s Book of the Year and the Kenneth Slessor Poetry Prize, and The Curse Words (2011). Love Poems and Death Threats was published in 2015. 

The Japanese Aeronautical Exploration Agency commissioned Watson to write some haiku to interest Japanese astronauts on the International Space Station and large construction companies like Mirvac have incorporated Watson’s poetry into public art installations. 

This recollection may also be of particular interest to your students:

“Being a Murri boy who was German/Irish was not exactly of interest to anyone. It wasn’t until my late teens that music from U2 emerged and Midnight Oil … suddenly it was cool to be black or part of another minority …You didn’t hear any more jokes about ‘Dumb Irishmen’ or ‘Boongs’ or ‘Nazis’. When Uncle Tiga Bayles and Uncle Michael appeared in the film clip for Midnight Oil’s ‘Beds are Burning’, I enjoyed a very minor celebrity at school because some kids in the neighbourhood saw these Uncles at family BBQs … But really, it was a short-lived acceptance.”

Consider this ABC podcast: https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/earshot/love-poems-and-death-threats2c-the-poetry-of-samuel-wagan-wats/6532358

Brief description of Love Poems and Death Threats

The prescribed text: Love Poems and Death Threats was published by the University of Queensland Press in 2015. The collection contains 76 poems divided into four sections: 

I. Blood and Ink II. No Standing Anytime III. No Naked Flames and the poem Addendum stands alone at the end. 

The specific HSC suite comprises seven poems which represent a range of human experiences and emotions.

Ways to use Love Poems and Death Threats in the classroom

Teaching these poems cannot commence until Term 4 2026 and will be first examined in 2027.

Ways into the poems as texts representing human experiences:

Poetry is an effective medium for capturing human experiences and emotions as if each poem is a photograph or portrait of human experiences. 

In exploring these poems there are two syllabus frames to consider: 

The first is the syllabus Focus Area statement:

How each poem/the suite explores:

• The experiences of individuals 
• The experiences of groups and the wider world
• The emotions from those experiences
• The attributes or human characteristics that arise from in these experiences
• The experiences within these texts as representations of identity, culture, acceptance and growth
• How those experiences may enable human agency, independence, growth and change
• The experiences within these texts as representations of the tension between agency and conformity in our human experience
• How these representations reveal the complexity of what motivates people and how they act: sometimes this is paradoxical or inconsistent or challenging to understand

What do we gain from these poems:

• Insights into emotional, intellectual, physical, cultural and lived experiences

Similarly, how do the poems:

• Invite us to see the world differently?
• Challenge our assumptions? 
• Encourage us to reflect personally? 
• Challenge our assumptions about the nature of human experience?

The second frame are the specific considerations for studying texts authored by Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander Peoples:

• The artistic and Cultural value of these texts, including ideas, arguments and representations of identity, histories and Cultures
• How Country/Place, Community and lived experiences shape the perspectives of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander Storytellers and audiences
• How Storytelling, Aboriginal Languages and Aboriginal English are expressions of Culture, identity and Customary practices
• How the modes of these texts may recognise and contribute to Cultural conventions or practices of oral Storytelling
• How Cultural symbolism, imagery, allusion and irony are used to shape meaning
• How personal values and perspectives are broadened and reconsidered through engagement with these texts
• Texts that originate from a range of diverse Communities. From the Stage 6 English Syllabus (2024)

Be sure to include references to both content areas in class discussion and tasks you offer your students.

Also, be sure to read the poems aloud and give students opportunities to hear the poems. 

In my blog this year on the 2027 prescribed texts of Gwen Harwood’s poems I discussed the importance of poetry as form and its role in representation. It is valuable to re-visit that material. 

On first looking at a poem… 

Share these hints below when first reading a poem and encourage these strategies for the unseen component of the reading task where there are sometimes two poems.

It is important to create a classroom culture that will both encourage and value students offering interpretation, taking risks in their discussions and that personal response is valued. 

Handy hints for reading a poem:

• Trust your own insights 
• What does the title say to you before you have read the poem? 
• Expect the unexpected in a poem: something unusual, different, out of place
• You are unlikely to understand everything in one reading
• Be sure to hear the poem or read it aloud: follow the punctuation 
• What is happening in the poem? 
• What does the poet think about this experience and what do they want to share with us?

Starting out with Samuel Wagon Watson’s poems:

‘The Remedy of Butterflies’ is chronologically the first in the collection; also it is accessible, engaging and a delightful affirmation of the small, ordinary moments of human experiences.

1. Discuss the title: where do we use the word “remedy”? We often associate “remedy” with a cure, treatment, therapy, a solution. Consider the connotations of the word “butterflies”: delicate, pretty, fragile, hope, beauty and we are already thinking about the poet’s purpose. Ideally it would be wonderful to share some delicate blue butterflies in your lesson. In what ways would these gentle insets of nature be a remedy and a remedy for what?
2. Like other poems this one is attributed to a specific person: For Tessa. According to the poet’s publisher—UQP—Tessa was “an old friend… someone very encouraging…but sadly they lost touch.” This detail adds to the poem’s poignancy.
3. Listen to the poem read aloud twice: ask your students: what do you notice?
4. Consider:
   • What is happening in the poem?
   • Structure: how does the poem’s structure capture and shape the different experiences especially the negative and then positive experiences? What role does the opening line of each stanza have?
   • It is often a feature of a poem that it opens with establishing the main idea and concludes with a broader philosophical reflection of what the speaker has gained and similarly, what we as the reader have gained? Indeed, this includes the insights we gain into emotional, intellectual, physical, cultural and lived experiences?

   • In this poem note the physical framing of the opening line:
       Nothing moves
     and the poem’s closing lines:
       Life sparks
       from tiny wings;
         the remedy of butterflies …

     Explain how this framing represents the significance of the experiences and emotions explored in the poem.

   • The remedy of butterflies represents a range of emotions and human characteristics evoked through these experiences: for example, sorrow, regret, stasis, hope, joy, pleasure
   • Highlight the key word choices which represent and shape our responses to the experiences, emotions and insights to humanity for example burnt, crisped, cinder, attempts, scorched, hypothermia, rigor, sold, spectres, chill, inertia.
   • Note the positive connotations of these glorious phrases: counter-striking slivers of sunshine, new day, yellow sulphurs, playfully, wake of morning breath, flapping gently, life
   • Who is impacted by the changes? To whom does this enable agency?

   • While most of this poem conveys a generally negative perspective on the urban landscape there are also glimpses of hope and life even before the joy and enlightenment of the butterflies’ arrival. In the second stanza I love the line:

       Counter-striking slivers of sunshine finally spray-tan this suburban wasteland.

     This is a perfect validation that poetry needs to be heard: the sounds of the alliterative “s” sounds are delicate and add a sweetness. The adverb “finally” acts as a transition and the contemporary use of “spray-tan” as a verb is fun and clever.

   • In groups ask students to choose words or images from The Remedy of Butterflies which best capture Wagan Watson’s representation of this experience.
   • What other elements of the Focus Area statement are evident in this poem?

Chronologically Finn is the next poem and would be a good one to explore before a writing task.

Rivers are inextricable to First Nations culture and identity and indeed, to many cultures, ancient and contemporary. Rivers are often the lifeblood of a community for travel, transport and water supply. Rivers in First Nations cultures often feature in their paintings and stories including the significant Dreaming stories. 

This poem will be valuable for not only exploring aspects of the Focus Area but also:

• How Country/Place, Community and lived experiences shape the perspectives of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander Storytellers and audiences
• How Storytelling, Aboriginal Languages and Aboriginal English are expressions of Culture, identity and Customary practices

Watson often talks about the river he knows well, the Brisbane River. It is a river which has been the focus of floods and disaster and in 2011 and 2022 saw massive devastation and indeed just recently in March 2025. It would be valuable to read the opening poem to Love Songs and Death Threats, ‘Blood and Ink, which is a powerful celebration of the importance of rivers in Watson’s lived experience. 

The State Library of Queensland has an interesting overview of floods in the Brisbane River.

Distinctive features of ‘Finn’:

What do we notice about the single word title: Finn?

The intertextual reference to Mark Twain and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is very powerful and interesting and will probably need some explanation:

• American classic novel
• Set on one of the world’s longest and famous rivers - the Mississippi
• A great tale of adventure
• Involves young Huck Finn and a runaway slave, Jim
• Beautifully evocative of the power of the river as a journey for personal understanding and agency

The references to Mark Twain and Huckleberry Finn are complex and provide an extra layer of richness in this poem. For example, Mark Twain was the pen name used by Samuel Clements and it refers to two fathoms or 12 feet which is the safe depth for steamboats to travel on the river. When Watson says: The Mark Twain of what lies underneath/is cold and calculative this could suggest that the safety is being questioned.

In ‘Finn’ Watson seems to be exploring the river as a symbol and a representation of how treacherous nature and the elements can be. Perhaps it is also Wagon Watson’s own early warning system for the fragility of our natural landscape: 

               the river lurks in the shadows of our apocalyptic horizons, 
               buffed: an inverted mushroom cloud.

There are echoes here of Robert Gray in Flames and Dangling Wires: 

               There is a fog over the hot sun… 
And …    I realise I am in the future

Like Gray, Watson’s poem is certainly stark in so many ways as it provokes us to ponder the frailty of nature, rivers, and indeed, the planet. The Brisbane River has suffered many major flooding events This could be a valuable poem to consider the tension between agency and conformity in our human experience? Are we prepared to change our own actions and behaviours?

Look at how Watson unites the individual into the collective in the opening line which invites us into his thesis: We are all watermarked without signs of a recession

Watson uses a range of strident and evocative words, phrases and images to represent his perspective:

• Lurks
• Shadows
• Apocalyptic
• Mushroom cloud
• Limits of excess
• Masked as a scourge and a scoundrel
• No one saw it coming
• The brim of our narcissism was turned yesterday
• Naïve as we had been
• Days of terror and suspicion
• Cold and calculative
• Nothing as anchored as it sems
• Design flaw on a papier-mache façade
• Mirage in a festering worker’s paradise
• A dirty curse word
• Blatant recidivism
• Underbelly
• Marauding and lurid whispers
• conspire

Form small groups and allocate 3 of the above to each group: with close analysis of the three examples, in what ways does Watson use language to represent his perspective on the human experience?

Responding to ‘The Remedy of Butterflies’ and ‘Finn’:

In the Poetry International article Watson has said: 

“I suppose I look at all of these poems I’ve written as like they’re the Polaroids, come out of my head, through my eyes and I’m taking photos.”

The interviewer and writer of the article continues:

‘His writing reframes lived experience often by embracing its headlong moment and momentum, while offering in the re-reading the chance glance captured and relived, details that might have been overlooked, connections that should be apparent’. 

To what extent do ‘The Remedy of Butterflies’ and ‘Finn’ represent the “lived experience” that is a most significant feature of the focus area: Texts and human experiences?

Module C opportunities

Students need to be engaged in both critical and imaginative writing as often as possible to both normalise the experience and build competence and confidence. 

Possibilities

Choose a specific time of the day and write your own short piece that captures the essence of that moment. Some students might like to have some fun with writing a haiku poem. 

OR

In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck recalls that 

‘It's lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them and discuss about whether they was made or only just happened.’

Write a short description (300-400 words) which opens with “It’s lovely to be in/on…” which captures the positive experiences of this place. Or change the mood and open with “It’s terrifying to be in/on…” which captures the negative experiences of this place.

‘Let’s Talk’, ‘El Diablo Highway’ and  ‘Blacktracker…Blackwriter… Blacksubject’ 

These poems are more forceful in their First Nations’ voice. These poems are different in their style and provide excellent examples of the power of poetry to represent human experiences in all its complexity.

Consider this comment:

‘Alongside poets such as Ali Cobby Eckermann and Lionel Fogarty, Watson is one of the key voices in the reassertion and resurgence of contemporary indigenous Australian poetry. That said, Watson speaks for a broad cross-section of contemporary Australian experience, traversing and speaking to the faultlines that make a rich country like Australia such a troubling and troubled place.’
(Michael Brennan for Poetry International article)

This extract from ‘El Diablo Highway’ poignantly highlights these “faultlines”:

El Diablo Highway keeps the fringes of society curbed and humanity gridlocked. Pits of eternal damnation flame and crackle and there is the ever-present cologne of sulphur; burning tyes linger.

An engaging way into these poems could be to view the film clips and listen to Midnight Oils’ Beds are Burning. Peter Garret and his band were significant in raising awareness about First Nations’ experiences and gave legitimacy and confidence to First Nations performers and writers who followed. 

Access Beds are Burning at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejorQVy3m8E

This song still rocks and resonates with Australia today. Issue copies of the lyrics.

Also, share the excellent material in Conversation with Blackwords. 

In groups ask students to make contributions to the table below. 

Responding

Consider a collaborative discursive article that explores the power of the power of Art to ensure agency not just by those who write but the readers, listeners and viewers to be excited, inspired, engaged and active advocates for our world. Include at least two First Nations advocates and one must be Samuel Wagon Watson. Include 3-4 images with captions, clever and engaging subtitles and a Further Reading list at the end. 

An alphabetical list of Five Senses reviews of First Nations texts

To further engage students a wide reading component could be included to expose students to the broader pantheon of First Nations creators which is growing in momentum, power and richness. 

Ideally this discussion and exposure needs to start from Year 7 so that there is not only a legitimacy of the Oz Black Voice but a genuine selection of engaging, interesting, accessible examples of prose fiction, poets, films and drama. 

Since writing these blogs for Five Senses Deb and I have covered a range of impressive First Nations texts:

Relevant details in relation to the new NSW English Stage 6 HSC syllabus

Teaching these poems cannot commence until Term 4 2026 and will be first examined in 2027.

There are requirements for particular types of texts to be selected from the prescribed texts list for different courses. Great care must be taken in selecting a pathway of texts that meets all the requirements.

For the Advanced course 

Four prescribed texts to be studied with at least ONE from each of the following categories (prose fiction, poetry, and drama OR nonfiction OR film OR media) and ONE authored by Shakespeare.

For the Standard course 

Students are required to closely study three prescribed texts with ONE drawn from each of the following categories: prose fiction, poetry, drama OR film OR media OR nonfiction.

Possible pathways for HSC Advanced course

Possible pathways for HSC Standard course