Other People (poem)
1971 poem by Australian poet Chris Wallace-Crabbe
"Other People" (1971) is a poem by Australian poet Chris Wallace-Crabbe.
It was originally published in We Took Their Orders and Are Dead : An Anti-War Anthology edited by Shirley Cass, Ros Cheney, David Malouf, and Michael Wilding, in 1971, and was subsequently reprinted in the author's single-author collections and a number of Australian poetry anthologies.
Synopsis
A young man looks back at World War I and laments that four of his uncles were lost in that war. He wonders if anyone cares who the enemy was any more. "Their chalk was wiped clean off the slate,/The War meant nothing at all."
Critical reception
In his commentary on the poem in 60 Classic Australian Poems Geoff Page noted that , contrary to a lot of other war poems, "'Other People' over nearly 40 years has retained its force – and its charm. 'Charm' may seem a strange word in relation to a successful anti-war poem, but that is what the poem has – and in abundance.
Publication history
After the poem's initial publication in We Took Their Orders and Are Dead : An Anti-War Anthology it was reprinted as follows:
Twelve Poets, 1950-1970 edited by Alexander Craig, Jacaranda Press, 1971
Where the Wind Came : Poems by Chris Wallace-Crabbe, Angus and Robertson, 1971
Disenchantment edited by Owen Webster, Goldstar Publications, 1972
Australian Verse from 1805 : A Continuum edited by Geoffrey Dutton, Rigby, 1976
The Illustrated Treasury of Australian Verse edited by Beatrice Davis, Nelson, 1984
Violence to Non-Violence : Individual Perspectives, Communal Voices : an Anthology edited by William Kelly, Harwood Academic/Craftsman House, 1994
The Thing Itself and Other Poems by Chris Wallace-Crabbe, Picaro Press, 2007
60 Classic Australian Poems edited by Geoff Page, University of NSW Press, 2009
The Puncher & Wattmann Anthology of Australian Poetry edited by John Leonard, Puncher & Wattmann, 2009
New and Selected Poems by Chris Wallace-Crabbe, Carcanet, 2013
This is Home : Essential Australian Poems for Children edited by Jackie French, National Library of Australia, 2019
Notes
You can read the full text of the poem on the Poets Union webpage, "Poems About War".
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Other People (poem)” is 1971 poem by Australian poet Chris Wallace-Crabbe. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Other, People and poem, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “1971 poem by Australian poet Chris Wallace-Crabbe” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q139958266. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1971, 1950, 1970 and 1972.
Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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