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The poem “Naked Girl and Mirror” is about a young girl who describes her feelings and her body changing during her adolescence. The poem which is filled with confusion, love and hate was written by Judith Wright, an Australian poet born in Armidale, New South Wales 1915. She was the eldest daughter of Philip and Ethel Wright and was raised in Brisbane and Sydney. After the untimely death of her mother she lived with her aunt and then boarded at the New England Girls’ School after her father remarried in 1929. After graduating high school, Wright did further study of History and Philosophy at the University of Sydney. At the beginning of World War II she then later returned to Wollomombi Station to help her father due to the shortage of labour caused by conscription. During her time at the station she grew an attachment to the land and its people which helped her with her work throughout her life.

Wright’s first book of poetry, “The Moving Image” was published in 1946 while she was working as a research officer at the University of Queensland. In 1950 she moved to Mount Tamborine, Queensland, with Jack McKinney a novelist and philosopher, which they then had their daughter Meredith born in the same year. They married in 1962, but McKinney unfortunately passed away five years later. She later moved to Braidwood in New South Wales.

She was a founding member of the Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland, along with Brian Clouston, David Fleay and Kathleen McArthur and was president from 1964 to 1976. Wright was the first Australian to be awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for poetry in 1992.

As well as a poet, she was also well known for her environmentalist campaigning in support of the conservation of the Great Barrier Reef and Fraser Island. With some friends, she found one of the earliest nature conservation movements.
She was also enthusiastic about the Aboriginal land rights movement. She attended a march...