Francis Webb's America

Davidson argues that Francis Webb's physical and intellectual escape into Canada was also one into US poetics and that Webb's US engagement has been hitherto underestimated due to confusion around the origins of "Dawn Wind on the Islands," "Melville at Woods Hole," and "Serenade to the Favourite Movie-actress" in particular. New evidence around these poems suggests Webb's chief Canadian period from 1947-1949 gave rise to a unique poetic weighing of Australian, Canadian and US histories of land and mind in his second collection Leichhardt in Theatre (1952). Though Webb returned to Australia with the rank of Sergeant, he is often overlooked as a war poet.