SOURCE: Martin, Philip. “A. D. Hope, Nonconformist.” Journal of Popular Culture 23, no. 2 (fall 1989): 47-53.

In the following essay, Martin asserts that although Hope is perceived as a conservative, almost archaic poet, he is in his own way an unorthodox and unique Australian poet.

Such savage and scarlet as no green hills dare Springs in that waste, some spirit which escapes The learned doubt, the chatter of cultured apes Which is called civilization over there. 

A. D. Hope, who will be eighty next July, is the son of a Presbyterian minister and his wife: of Nonconformists in the religious sense of the word. But he himself is a nonconformist in the other sense as well: one who does not conform to accepted opinions or attitudes. And though he by no means adheres to his parents' Christian beliefs it may well be that the religiously Nonconformist cast of mind helped...