When he died, in May 1892, New South Wales’s economy was in a nosedive. Banks were folding. Like many others, Boake lost his job, and his father was struggling. Boake blamed himself for his father’s problems. He was one of many in the colony who topped themselves. They were not all depressives.

Boake, although his oeuvre was uneven and, necessarily, limited, was a good poet. He deserves a place in our literary history. He also warrants that the truth, as far as it is known, be told about his life.

Charles Boag, Camperdown, NSW

Patrick Buckridge replies:

I entirely agree with Charles Boag that Barcroft Boake was a good poet; I said as much in my review. Boake deserves a place in our literary history, and he has one. As to whether he was clinically depressive, who can say? He certainly had bouts of depression, and he did commit suicide, for no obvious external reason. (I suppose the state of the New South Wales economy may have figured in his thinking, though I’d have to say that strikes me as unlikely. His last poem, ‘A Wayside Queen’, seems to me to suggest he’d contracted venereal disease from a prostitute, which might be closer to the mark.) But in any case, I wouldn’t regard a diagnosis of clinical depression, even if it could be verified, as grounds for ‘writing him off’ either as a poet or as a human being. There’s a lot of it about, especially among writers. And the fact is that the poems published before his death (Refshauge’s first series) focus on death with unusual frequency. The lighter poems collected in Refshauge’s second series do evoke a merrier, more companionable soul, as I said in the review, but I’ll have to differ with Boag on whether the near-fatal mock-hanging was a straightforward expression of that festive ethos.

Never again

Dear Editor,
I appreciate that journal covers must be eye-catching, but the photograph on the cover of the July–August issue of ABR is more than that. It is heart-breaking and totally arresting. I have read Wayne Reynolds’s review of the book from which the photograph was taken (Hiroshima: The World’s Bomb, by Andrew J. Rotter), and can find nothing in this review of military history to justify the image of a dead baby boy carried by a clearly traumatised little boy.

I suspect that one of the reasons why the image has affected me so deeply is that my little grandson Souma is about the same age. I recognise the body language: it is how the children stand to attention during school assembly in Japan. With nothing else left, the boy falls back on the rituals of school. I recognise also the Hanten worn by the dead infant. My granddaughter Kalin used to wear one inside during winter. Along with my daughter-in-law, my son and our grandchildren, we visited Hiroshima. Necessary as such a visit was, it was traumatising for us all then, as is your chosen photograph now.

I presume that your choice of image is based on the belief that those without some direct link to Japan need to be reminded of the human cost of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, so that they too never forget and that they affirm, ‘Never again!’. However, I wonder if you would use the picture of a dead child and his traumatised brother to remind your readers of the tragedy of infant mortality in Australian indigenous communities, or of those refugee children who inevitably have died making the crossing from South-East Asia to northern Australia, or children who die in traffic accidents in Australia. How much distance in time and how much otherness are required to make this an acceptable option?

Helen Andreoni, Armidale, NSW