Gwen Harwood's "Selected Poems" 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.

Seven of Harwood’s poems are set for study in 2027-2028 in Year 12 in Advanced and Standard Texts and human experiences: 
‘The Glass Jar’, ‘The Violets’, ‘At Mornington’, ‘Father and Child, I and II’, ‘A Valediction’, ‘Beyond Metaphor’, ‘The Sharpness of Death’

Brief description of Gwen Harwood: Selected Poems

The prescribed text: Gwen Harwood Selected Poems was published by Penguin in 1995 shortly before Harwood’s death and includes poems written in her later years.  The collection is extensive and it is valuable for students to see the collection as a whole. The specific HSC suite comprises seven poems which represent a range of human experiences and emotions. They are accessible in language and contain an authenticity about life and its small, significant moments. Childhood features often and ideas about loss, frailty, nature and death are common. Some poems feature poignant intertextual references to other writers and philosophers which add depth, richness and challenge especially for Advanced students.

Distinctive features of Gwen Harwood: Selected Poems

• The seven prescribed poems are drawn from three different collections:
  • The Glass Jar is from Harwood’s 1963 collection
  • The Violets, At Mornington and Father and Child are from 1969-1974
  • A Valediction, Beyond Metaphor and The Sharpness of Death are from her 1981 collection
• Harwood’s poetry is sufficiently accessible to enable students to explore the storytelling of her poems, the poignancy of her observations about humanity and the delicate beauty of her language choices.
• Childhood, memory, loss, grief, beauty and natural surroundings, fragility and death are common concerns in many of her poems
• Harwood’s allusions to other writers and philosophers enriches her representation
• The familiarity of some of the content of the poems will be valuable inspiration for students own writing in Module C e.g. childhood memories, role of nature.

Ways to use Gwen Harwood: Selected Poems in the classroom

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

Getting Started

As the first unit of work for their HSC it is valuable for students to know their pattern of study and the key differences between each Focus Area. At the end of this blog there are two examples of a suggested pattern of study for each course. The key criteria for all choices should be your own students: you know what will engage and appeal; student engagement is key to student success.

The reduction of texts in the 2027 Prescribed list creates extra challenges for teachers especially with a reduction in drama texts and no Shakespeare in the texts and human experiences Focus Area. Choosing Harwood for this Focus Area may not be the best choice for Standard students as there are more accessible texts for their first HSC study. 

Planning and sequencing lessons is critical as it is easy to run out of time in Term 4.

It is a challenging term as students come to understand the demands of being an HSC student, manage HSC Assessments across all subjects, refine responses and manage their time and personal life for essential tasks. Transparency with students about their text sequence, assessment schedule and other expectations need to be established from the beginning.

It is important that the exploration of these poems is framed by the specifics of the Focus Area’s statement. The statement is the same for both Standard and Advanced and indeed, the only difference between the two courses occurs in the verbs of two outcomes: 

• Standard students explain (St) / analyse (Ad) the relationships between texts through context, form and language
• Standard students analyse (St) / evaluate (Ad) the ways context and values influence composition and audience response

Given the key concept of this Focus area is representation, poetry allows authentic exploration of form; specifically language choices made by Harwood to represent the various elements of the Focus Area content.

Aligning each poem with the Focus Area statement, students need to ask these questions: 

What are the:

• Experiences which affect individuals and the wider collective?
• Emotions and human qualities/traits arising from those experiences?
• Insights into emotional, intellectual, physical, cultural and lived experiences?
• Representations of identity, culture, acceptance and growth?
• Representations of the tension between agency and conformity in our human experience?
• Revelations of the paradoxes of motivation and behaviour?

Similarly, how do the poems:

• Invite students to see the world differently?
• Challenge students’ assumptions? 
• Encourage students to reflect personally? 
• Challenge their assumptions about the nature of human experience?

“How” in English always means “in what ways”: ideas, language choices, setting, structure, imagery, voice.

Students will need to be given the opportunities to build their skills to critically analyse the ways Harwood’s choice of language, form and structure shapes meaning.

Harwood’s language choices are characterised by:

• The use of narrative voice to draw the reader into the story; for example, compare the third person of The Glass Jar, the first person of The Violets, At Mornington, Father and Child, Valediction, Beyond Metaphor and a more complex alternating between the imperative voice and the first person in The Sharpness of Death
• Allusions and intertextuality to other thinkers and writers; for example, Donne, Shakespeare, Wittgenstein

Harwood’s chosen form is poetry. This form is characterised by some conventions which are similar to, for example, prose fiction and others which are unique to poetry. As Sylvia Plath says in her essay A Comparison, “poetry is concentrated, a closed fist … a novel is …an open hand…” In this effective metaphor Plath captures the power of poetry.

Similarities of Harwood’s poetry with other forms:

• May tell a story
• Explores significant and universal ideas about humanity
• Often incorporates setting as part of the experiences

Uniqueness of Harwood’s poetry as form:

• Condensed, tight, intense
• Often uses metaphor and intertextuality to capture an idea or experience
• Contains language which is selected and shaped to distil an experience, idea or perspective in a single, concentrated form

What characterises Harwood’s structure?

• Harwood often uses free verse, but her punctuation becomes intrinsic to her meaning, for example, in The Glass Jar the first stanza is one long sentence and the commas and enjambment are critical
• Often the stanzas are self-contained but not always
• Short sentences are interspersed with long sentences: the brevity adds intensity and drama eg The Glass Jar: He slept. Father and Child: I fired
• Sometimes Harwood immediately sets the scene: The Violets: It is dusk and cold, Father and Child: Daybreak: the household slept.
• Use of the diptych in Father and Child
• Four-part structure in The Sharpness of Death

On first looking at a poem… 

Re-visit strategies for reading and accessing a poem to build student competence and above all, confidence. They don’t need to be trying to fathom a convoluted puzzle or apply unfamiliar Greek terminology but to admire and enjoy the way Harwood has shaped meaning.  

Above all, how does Harwood represent key human experiences? 

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 
• 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 does the title say to you before you have read the poem? 
• What is happening in the poem? 
• What does Harwood think about this experience and what does she want to share with us?

Two pathways into the poems

If your students do not have the full collection be sure they are given access to the seven poems from the beginning of the unit and alert them to the different times of Harwood’s life that she wrote them.

Option 1

Suggest students lay the poems out on their desk.

Consider reading to the class the first four poems or encourage your best readers to also be involved but give them time to prepare their reading:

• The Glass Jar
• The Violets
• At Mornington
• Father and Child

Share some initial insights:

• How does the title invite you into the experiences and emotions?
• What strikes you at this stage about Harwood’s language and style?
• Brainstorm with students the different experiences represented within each poem.

Then share the next three poems which are more complex, given their literary allusions:

• A Valediction
• Beyond Metaphor
• The Sharpness of Death

What do you notice about these three poems compared to the initial four?

Does anyone have a favourite yet? Record this to see if this decision changes. 

Encourage close annotation of each poem and the documentation of some features of the Focus Area statement in a table:

Later consider:

• Insights into emotional, intellectual, physical, cultural and lived experiences?
• Representations of identity, culture, acceptance and growth?
• Representations of the tension between agency and conformity in our human experience?
• Revelations of the paradoxes of motivation and behaviour?

Option 2

If looking at all poems as an introduction is too overwhelming for your class, consider starting with The Violets which represents accessible human experiences and emotions, tells an engaging story and has wider thematic concerns:

• Bring some violets to class for students to appreciate their prettiness, delicacy and physical fragility.
• Consider how violets are often associated with death. In ancient Rome, it was a flower symbolic of grief and innocence, and was often used to decorate the graves of children and babies. This association is also found in other cultures and folklore.
• Notice the title is The Violets: why “the”?
• The short sentence which opens the first stanza establishes the setting: It is dusk, and cold. Harwood will use these short, evocative sentences in other poems.
• The narrative voice is quickly established as the speaker tells the story:
    I kneel to pick
    frail, melancholy flowers
    Among ashes and loam.
• In what ways is this first person an effective language choice in representing personal and shared human experiences and their associated emotions?
• Notice the innocence and joy of comparing the colours of sunset to “striped like ice cream.”
• Who is Scarlatti? Why include this musical reference?
• Consider the impact of the closing lines of the first stanza:
    Ambiguous light. Ambiguous sky
• Notice that the enjambment of the Ambiguous sky forces the reader to the second stanza which sees a change in time to the past which the speaker now recalls
• Notice the inclusion of direct speech which Harwood will also use in other poems: this vernacular style adds a down to earth mood which contrasts with the gravity of the young girl’s waking from the fearful half-sleep
• Note these experiences and how they are represented
  
  • Childhood
  • Passing moments
  • Value of memory
  • Fragility
  • Time
  • Transience
  • Recollections
  • Reconciliation
  • Families
  • Death
• Note these emotions and human traits-how are they represented?
  
  • Sadness
  • Fear
  • Confidence
  • Despair
  • Anger
  • Restlessness
  • Tenderness
  • Love
  • Comfort
• Note recurring motifs e.g. light, flowers, parents
• Note the symmetry of how the poem opens and closes
• Consider how such recollections help us to reflect and thus, grow and gain agency, resignation and even resilience.

HSC style-like questions and other tasks

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

Task for responding

How does Harwood represent the emotions arising from human experiences through the features of poetry?

It is important to give students writing opportunities early in the unit to build skills and confidence.

This HSC-style question would be suitable for The Violets. The Glass Jar and At Mornington would also be suitable poems for this question and are accessible for the initial stages of the unit. 

Harwood and Module C

The personal quality of Harwood’s poems and the use of family, childhood, memories will enable students to use their own experiences for imaginative, discursive and persuasive styles. 

The more this style of writing can be normalized, students will grow their skills and capacity for writing under pressure.

Share with students the value and importance of tapping into reality and their own experiences as sources for writing: it enables authenticity, detail and genuine engagement. 

In January 2025 the Sydney Morning Herald ran a series called “The summer that changed everything.”  Prominent artists, comedians, authors and journalists were invited to write about their experiences of one summer.

Markus Zusak wrote about his summer of 1986-87 when he bought his first surfboard.

This is how Zusak opens his short story:

There were definite advantages to our Mum being a suburban house cleaner, or cleaning lady. If my siblings or I were ever off sick from school, we might enter those other-worldly houses. Sure, there were plenty of modest ones, too, but even then there might be a pool table, or an adorable cocker spaniel. But mostly, we waited for summer.

Give students a copy of the story and read it to them.  Ask them to highlight five examples of what engages them in the story. 

Return to At Mornington and ask students to highlight what features of Harwood’s writing engages them in this story.

Task:

Part (a) 

Choose an experience from your childhood which you still recall.

Open with a sentence which takes the reader directly to the experience.

Use the first-person narrative.

Incorporate two features from Zusak and two from At Mornington.

Write about 500 words and try to capture specific details of your experience including concrete detail of you, your surrounds, the setting and the weather.

Include a photograph.

Part (b)

In about 400 words explain how the retelling of your childhood experience was shaped by your engagement with Markus Zusak and Gwen Harwood.

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

Gwen Harwood: Selected Poems is an Australian poetry text.

The pathways below include a drama text by Shakespeare which can be found in all sections of the course, except in Texts and human experiences. 

Possible pathways for HSC Advanced English course

For the Standard course 

Students are required to closely study 3 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 Standard English course