Lionel Fogarty – February 2015

International Mother Language Day – February 21 2015

Lionel has been active since the 1970s in many political struggles of the Aboriginal people, from the Land Rights movement, to setting up Aboriginal health and legal services, to the issue of black deaths in custody. (Lionel’s own brother, Daniel, died in police custody in 1993.) His introduction to poetry was not at school but came through his interaction with Murri people in Cherbourg and Murgon. His first collection of poetry, Kargun, was published in 1980, and he has gone on to publish eight further collections, as well as a children’s book, Booyooburra, a traditional Wakka Wakka story. Lionel has travelled widely in the United States and Europe, reading from his work and participating in conferences of Indigenous peoples.

Dha’gun Jabree Djan Mitti: The More Complete Works of Lionel Fogarty
Salt Publishing, 2007; ISBN 9781844710560
Among the most ‘experimental’ of contemporary Australian poetry, Lionel’s work has sometimes been described as ‘surrealist’. Certainly large amounts of Indigenous language, which white Australians sometimes find confronting, are employed but in part as an attempt to further dialogue between Australian cultures. The “timelessness”, the dreaming, the conversations between story and land, between the totemic and people, are beyond labelling. A unique poet, he has effectively managed to confront the persistent attacks by imperialist language, and (still) colonial culture/s, on his people’s voice, by preserving its identity, and also creating something entirely new (an extension of what existed before), to fight the invader.

Yerrabilela Jimbelung: Poems about Family and Friends (with Kargun Fogarty and Yvette Walker)
Keeaira Press, 2008; ISBN 9780980323368
Lionel is a leading spokesman for Indigenous rights in Australia through a poetry of linguistic uniqueness and overwhelming passion. An unabashedly political poet, his poetry employs Aboriginal English in innovative ways, challenging readers to reconfigure cultural assumptions.  He is a poet who has opened up the new space of black Australian post-surrealist writing and done much to reformulate our understanding of poetic discourse and its roles in both black and white communities. As well as a selection of his recent poems, Lionel introduces works by two young poets, Yvette Walker and his son Kargun Fogarty.