As visitor or вЂreaderвЂ™, I was faced with an enigma: a fragmented body (text) within an arresting and emphatically coherent framework (or paratext). The concealed bones were mute, surely, but was there a voice nonetheless? Who or what was speaking? Inscriptions? Histories? Why did this deathly pose, or prose, feel so вЂ¦ alive? There seemed a link with writing, with text, with reading that I could not quite fathom and which has troubled me since. What are they doing there? What do they say? How might we answer?ДЄfter attending the Australasian Association of Writing Programs conference in Canberra in 2016, I visited the AWM and Australian Unknown and was challenged by sorrow and misgiving, awe and ambivalence. These bones, reburied to mark the 75th anniversary of the end of the First World War, occupy the Tomb of the Unknown Australian Soldier in the Hall of Memory at the Australian War Memorial (AWM). Now, in the heart of AustraliaвЂ™s capital lies a pile of old bones that were dug up in 1993 from Adelaide Cemetery in Villers Bretonneux, France, sealed into a Blackwood coffin, transported by Qantas to Sydney and then by the RAAF to Canberra (Inglis 1999: 8). Known collectively as the вЂUnknown SoldierвЂ™ they were reburied in the post-war years in dedicated overseas cemeteries with the inscription вЂKnown unto GodвЂ™. One third of over 60,000 Australians killed in the 1914-18 war were unable to be identified. This is our triumph this is our consolation. We have made oblongs and stood them upon squares. The structure is now visible what is inchoate is here stated They place it very accurately they make a perfect dwelling-place. The players take the square and place it upon the oblong. вЂњLikeвЂќ and вЂњlikeвЂќ and вЂњlikeвЂќ вЂ“ but what is the thing that lies beneath the semblance of the thing?вЂ¦ Keywords: Unknown Australian Soldier, corpse poem, First World War This paper speculates on the potency of the вЂunknownвЂ™ and the way that texts like tombs assist concealment and revelation, remembering and forgetting, resurrection and erasure. His verse undercuts notions of the sacred associated with the Unknown Soldier and creates presence from absence, making explicit a key motive of imaginative writing. Weller deploys prosopopoeia, which has been described as the вЂfiction of the voice-from-beyond-the-graveвЂ™ and a вЂmaster tropeвЂ™ of poetic discourse. In 2007, Archie Weller published a poem titled the вЂUnknown SoldierвЂ™ ( Weller 2007) which gives a name, voice, history and character to the soldier-larrikin and anti-hero whose bones lie there, effectively challenging former prime-minister Paul KeatingвЂ™s eulogy which insists вЂWe will never know who this Australian wasвЂ™ ( Keating 1993). In 1993, the remains of one Australian killed on the Western FrontВ were exhumed, repatriated and interred in the Hall of Memory at the Australian War Memorial. Known collectively as the вЂUnknown SoldierвЂ™ they were reburied in the postwar years with the inscription вЂKnown unto GodвЂ™. One third of the 60,000 Australians killed in the 1914-1918 war were unable to be identified. Speaking for the dead: Writing and the Unknown Australian Soldier

Soldiers poems unknown