What happened in the Ern Malley poetry hoax of 1944?

The Ern Malley poetry hoax of 1944 was a famous literary deception orchestrated by two Australian poets, James McAuley and Harold Stewart.12

The two men, who were serving as soldiers at the time, sought to ridicule what they perceived as the meaninglessness and pretension of contemporary experimental verse. To achieve this, they created the fictional persona of Ern Malley, a recently deceased mechanic-salesman-poet, and composed a series of poems attributed to him. These works were then submitted to an Australian literary magazine.123

The hoax was intended to expose a lack of critical standards in the promotion of modern poetry. By successfully passing off their fabricated, nonsensical verses as the work of a serious poet, McAuley and Stewart highlighted the subjective nature of literary criticism and the ease with which experimental styles could be mistaken for profound art. The event remains a significant and well-known episode in the history of Australian literature.213