New Impulses in Australian Poetry was an anthology of contemporary Australian poetry published in Brisbane in 1968. The book was the idea of two Queensland poets, Rodney Hall and Thomas Shapcott. New Impulses was modelled on international modern poetry anthologies. At the time, this type of anthology was unfamiliar in Australia. Hall and Shapcott declared their intentions in modernist terms: to challenge the literary establishment and to promote the new poetry of the 1960s. It was a new type of anthology for a new type of poetry. This article explores the anthology's Queensland origins and examines its modern themes and influences. It concludes with a discussion of the anthology's impact and legacy from the perspective of Australian literary history, especially the ‘New Australian Poetry’, which it prefigured. In addition to its literary significance, New Impulses was an Australian publishing milestone. The book was the first poetry anthology published by University of Queensland Press. Its success demonstrated the market potential for literary publishing in Australia.

David Malouf's novel Fly Away Peter (1982) uses modernist techniques to describe the impact of modernity on the emergent Australian nation. At its centre is the country lad Jim Saddler, who dies in the industrialised battlefield in France. His fate is entwined with that of his friend Ashley Crowther, who inherits his family's property, and whose embrace of modernity includes a determination to preserve the land and its wildlife. Ashley recognises the value of Jim's instinctive connection with the natural world, and his knowledge of, and fascination with, birds. This fascination aligns Jim with the photographer Imogen Harcourt. Miss Harcourt is a modern woman, using the new technologies of representation to record the natural world, its movement and change. At the novella's end, it is Imogen who turns her lens towards a new future, as her grief for Jim is transfigured through an epiphanic vision of a surfer riding the waves to the beach.

In the opening of the above-mentioned article, the line ‘Donald Horne famously wrote, ‘Australia was born urban and quickly grew suburban’ (1964)’, should read: ‘Graeme Davison famously wrote, ‘Australia was born urban and quickly grew suburban’ (1994:98).’

The author would like to apologise for the oversight.