Who is marginalized in the poem "Australia" by Ania Walwicz?

Ania Walwicz is an Australian poet who emigrated from Poland in 1963.  Her works tend toward a more stream-of-consciousness style, revelatory of the inner states of her speakers.  Her poetry flouts a nonconformist structure, writing poems in prose, rather than in verses, which helps contribute to the often breathless feeling one gets when reading her poetry – rather than neatly organized ideas with line breaks and a literarily instinctual structure, we get long bursts of words and concepts all rolling one into the next, more indicative of the spontaneous nature of thought; this allows us to get a more authentic and honest feel for the speaker’s perspective.

In “Australia,” we see all of these elements at work – it is a poem in prose told from the perspective of an immigrant in Australia.  This immigrant is the one being marginalized, and exists as a representative of a large number of people who moved to Australia in the mid-twentieth century, when the country was just hitting its stride economically, and was known as a place of bounty and opportunity.  The majority of the poem is a long rant, a tirade of insults against Australia and its people, its climate, its size, its ethics.  When seen from the perspective of one who has abandoned everything he or she has ever known and is being forced to assimilate into a culture so grossly different from the one he or she is familiar with, it makes sense that this person would lash out so violently. 

In the middle of the poem, amid all these insults and complaints about the country, the speaker says, significantly, “you make me a dot in the nowhere….You never accept me.  For your own.  You always ask me where I’m from.  You always ask me.”  Here we see that the speaker feels very much alone, and very much a stranger in this culture.  He or she has been labeled as “other,” and has been unable to fit in in this new place.  “You don’t adopt me,” the speaker says accusingly, “You think you’re better than me.”  The speaker has had a very difficult time adjusting to this new home, and the Australian people are not making it any easier; the speaker has become embittered by the struggle, and from this bitterness comes a hatred for this new place.

Significantly, these feelings of victimization and marginalization do not come at the beginning of the poem – they are embedded deep in the middle, and the poem builds up to them with insults and ire.  In much the same way, the reasons for the immigrant’s anger and disaffection become embedded deep within layers of everyday slights.  Slights that become compressed and compounded and volatile, such that every element and detail of Australia and of its people receive the violence of the speaker’s hate, even some that perhaps do not deserve it.  It builds, and it radiates out from the central core, this conflict caused by the immigrant’s alienation within a culture that seems not to care.