Request to a Year Summary & Analysis
by Judith Wright

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The speaker of Judith Wright's "Request to a Year" recounts the story of her art-loving great-great-grandmother, who looked on as her son got swept downriver toward a waterfall. Realizing that she was too far away to help save the boy's life, the great-great-grandmother quickly sketched the scene to create a record of what happened. The poem suggests that the artist's role in challenging times is to bear witness to and record what's going on around them. It also speaks to the strength of generations of women in the speaker's family, illustrating how women, in particular, are often the ones to keep familial memories alive. The poem was published in the Australian poet's 1955 collection The Two Fires.

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