Angry Penguins

And, you know, at the time, Gleeson was the president of the Contemporary Arts Society, which was...

Modernism par excellence, you know, it was connected to Angry Penguins and also art in Australia.

And Menzies had started the Australian Academy of Art, which was the kind of reaction in conservatism.

Yeah.

Let's go back to Nolan's earlier years.

Before the war, he was part of a group named the Angry Penguins.

Who were they and what was his artistic focus at that time?

Yeah, sure.

But at the time, Robert Close had just been sent to jail for his Love Me Sailor novel.

And the Max Harris, sorry, the Angry Penguins trial had been on just beforehand.

And Alec knew the stuff he was writing was much more sexual and explicit than either of those.

And so, I mean, he could have fought the censorship fight, but he really saved his skin.

No censor reads poetry.

Poet can do what they like.

And I would have thought no one would have ever read the poems in The Angry Penguins except for the fuss about the hoax.

You know, they would have got away with it if that hoax fuss hadn't happened, yeah.