The Poem “Memo to J.C” from 1988, was written by Maureen Watson who was an aboriginal herself.
She was popular and highly-respected by non-natives as well as Aboriginal Australians. She was at the forefront of Aboriginal rights. In 1996 she was awarded the Australia Council Red Ochre award because of her national and international work with Aboriginal art. Also she received the United Nations Association Global Leadership Prize for her outstanding work towards building cross-cultural understanding and harmony.
Genre:
The main genre poetry contains a lot of sub-genres; in this case the subgenre is poem. The texts include a lot of end-rhyme and have a certain rhythm. The (original) text is made of stanzas and verse.
The first line: “when you…show more content… At the end by using: ”I” she’s standing completely alone with her own individual opinion.
The speaker talks directly to a second person – Jesus, and at the end The voice speaks in first person (I, me)
The Opening and Closing Lines of the Poem is interesting because if you put them together it describes the main points of the text.
“When you were down here JC and walked this earth, you were a pretty decent sort of bloke.
I wonder, if it all died with you, that day on the cross. And if it just never got raised from the dead.”
Themes in the poem are: Australia, aboriginals, religion, cultures, Christianity, material capitalism vs. human values.
Conclusion:
In the poem the writer talks about all the bad things modern “white Fellowes” do. That they call themselves Christians but care more about great big buildings than talking to people without judging. And would rather get rich than helping a brother out. She thinks they forgot what Jesus told them. She wants to zoom in on the fact that newcomers in Australia took over the land of the aboriginals, ignored the narrative speaker and took away their