"South of My Days" (1945) is a poem by Australian poet Judith Wright.
[1] It was originally published in The Bulletin on 8 August 1945,[2] and was subsequently reprinted in the author's single-author collections and a number of Australian poetry anthologies.
[1] The poem depicts a landscape of desolation and isolation, both physical and emotional.
The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature notes that this poem established Wright "as the poet of the New England countryside."
The entry points out it reflects the countryside where Wright was born and that it also contains "fragments of stories from that countryside's pioneer past — drovers and bushrangers, desperate droughts and starving cattle, and the legendary coaches of Cobb & Co."[3] The Oxford Literary History of Australia stated that with this poem "Wright exceeds even the cultural confidence of other scions of squatting families, fusing an Australian landscape with her own past and with her own body.