Ern Malley

Ern Malley (Ernest Lalor Malley) is a fictitious poet invented in 1943 by poets James McAuley and Harold Stewart as part of Australia's most famous literary hoax. The hoax was designed to expose what the perpetrators saw as pretentious fraudulence in modernist poetry, particularly the avant-garde work being published in the journal Angry Penguins edited by Max Harris.

McAuley and Stewart created an entire poetic corpus for their fictional poet in a single afternoon in October 1943, deliberately composing nonsensical verse using random selections from a dictionary, quotations from Shakespeare and the Concise Oxford Dictionary, and whatever came to hand. They then sent the poems to Max Harris, claiming they were the work of a recently deceased mechanic-poet whose sister had discovered them among his effects.

Harris, believing he had discovered a major talent, published the poems in the autumn 1944 edition of Angry Penguins, dedicating the entire issue to Malley's work. When McAuley and Stewart revealed the hoax in June 1944, it caused a major scandal in Australian literary circles and led to an obscenity trial for Harris, who was convicted and fined for publishing "indecent" material.

The Creation of Ern Malley

In October 1943, James McAuley and Harold Stewart, both serving in the army's Directorate of Research and Civil Affairs in Melbourne, spent an afternoon creating the Ern Malley poems. According to their later accounts, they were motivated by hostility to modernist poetry and a desire to expose what they saw as the emperor's new clothes of avant-garde verse.

The two poets worked quickly, deliberately avoiding any attempt at coherent meaning. They opened books at random, selected words from the dictionary, incorporated advertising slogans, and cobbled together fragments without regard for sense or artistic value. Their method was intentionally anti-creative, designed to produce nonsense that would nevertheless sound like modernist poetry.

They created not just poems but an entire biography for their fictional poet. Ern Malley was imagined as a 25-year-old mechanic who had died of Graves' disease, leaving behind a collection of poems titled The Darkening Ecliptic. His "sister," Ethel Malley, supposedly discovered the poems and sent them to Angry Penguins seeking publication.

Publication and Initial Reception

Max Harris received the Malley poems with enthusiasm, believing he had discovered a significant new talent. He published them in the autumn 1944 edition of Angry Penguins, accompanied by laudatory commentary praising Malley's modernist technique and profound insight. The issue was extensively promoted and generated considerable interest in literary circles.

Harris's critical commentary, which would later prove embarrassing, analysed the poems in detail, finding deep meaning and sophisticated technique in what were actually random assemblages of words. This gap between Harris's earnest interpretation and the poems' deliberately nonsensical composition would become central to the scandal once the hoax was revealed.

The Revelation

On June 25, 1944, McAuley and Stewart revealed the hoax in the pages of Fact magazine, gleefully detailing how they had created the poems as deliberate nonsense. They explained their anti-modernist motivation, arguing that the episode proved modernist poetry was fraudulent and that editors like Harris couldn't distinguish genuine art from random gibberish.

The revelation caused a scandal that extended well beyond literary circles. Conservative journalists and politicians seized on the affair as evidence of cultural degeneracy, while modernist sympathisers defended Harris and questioned whether the poems were as nonsensical as their creators claimed.

The Obscenity Trial

In August 1944, South Australian police charged Max Harris with publishing indecent material, citing specific lines from the Malley poems. The trial, which has become infamous in Australian legal and literary history, saw Harris convicted and fined £5, with Detective Vogelsang famously testifying that he didn't know what the poems meant but "felt" they were indecent.

The prosecution focused on lines and images that could be interpreted as sexual, with particular attention to the poem "Night Piece". The trial became a farce, with literal-minded readings of deliberately obscure modernist imagery producing absurd interpretations.

The conviction was widely criticised as philistine censorship, and Harris became something of a martyr for literary freedom. The trial demonstrated the gulf between conservative Australian attitudes and modernist artistic practice, with the law siding decisively with conservative morality.

Aftermath and Reassessment

In the years following the revelation, critical opinion on the Ern Malley poems has undergone significant revision. While McAuley and Stewart intended to create worthless nonsense, many readers have found genuine poetic value in the work. Critics have argued that the poems, despite their origins, demonstrate qualities of successful modernist poetry: striking imagery, suggestive juxtapositions, and interpretive openness.

This ironic outcome raises profound questions about authorial intention and literary value. If poems created as deliberate nonsense can nonetheless function as effective poetry, what does this say about how meaning is created in literature? Does authorial intention matter if readers find legitimate artistic experience in the work?

Some critics have suggested that McAuley and Stewart, despite themselves, tapped into genuine poetic sensibility even while trying to avoid it. Others argue that the poems work precisely because they employ recognizable modernist techniques, even if deployed randomly. The debate continues, with the Ern Malley poems occupying a unique position: simultaneously hoax and genuine literature.

Cultural Impact

The Ern Malley affair has become one of Australia's most famous cultural controversies. It has inspired plays, novels, academic studies, and continuing debate about modernism, literary value, and the nature of art. The hoax raised questions about Australian cultural cringe, the relationship between Australian and international modernism, and the role of critics in determining literary merit.

For McAuley and Stewart, the affair proved professionally damaging despite their initial triumph. McAuley went on to become a significant conservative poet and cultural critic, founding the journal Quadrant, while Stewart eventually moved to Japan to study Buddhism. Both remained somewhat haunted by their creation, particularly as critical reassessment increasingly found value in the poems they had intended as worthless.

For Max Harris, the affair was initially devastating but ultimately enhanced his reputation. He became a prominent cultural figure, continuing to edit and publish, and in later years could look back on the episode with wry amusement rather than bitterness.

In 2023, a bar called Ern Malley est. 1943, claiming to be opened in 1943 and "Australia's oldest literary bar", was opened in Adelaide, Australia.

Legacy

The Ern Malley affair remains relevant to contemporary discussions of literature, meaning-making, and artistic value. It demonstrates the complex relationship between intention and interpretation, the role of context in determining meaning, and the difficulty of establishing objective criteria for literary quality.

The poems themselves continue to be read, studied, and anthologized—not as historical curiosities but as texts worthy of serious attention. This represents perhaps the ultimate irony: a hoax intended to destroy modernist poetry instead created a body of work that exemplifies modernism's strengths, including its openness to interpretation and its productive ambiguity.

Ern Malley, the fictional poet who never existed, has achieved a kind of literary immortality that his creators never intended. He remains Australia's most famous poet who wasn't real—and perhaps, in the ways that matter for literature, has become real through being read, interpreted, and valued despite the circumstances of his creation.