Thomas H. Ford Thomas H. Ford i(18417097 works by)
Gender: Male
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1 Two Postscripts to Barron Field in New South Wales : The Resurrection and the Great Seal Thomas H. Ford , Justin Clemens , 2024 single work essay
— Appears in: Cordite Poetry Review , 13 May no. 112 2024;

'Barron Field was, as we argued in our recent book Barron Field in New South Wales, responsible for the first volume of poetry published in Australia – a status flaunted in its title, First Fruits of Australian Poetry – and responsible also for the first articulation of the doctrine that later came to be known as terra nullius: that is, the foundational and genocidal legal fiction under which Australia was colonised by the British on the basis of its being previously uninhabited: i.e., that Aboriginal people, at least in the eyes of the law, simply didn’t exist, and, as not existing de jure, could be handled so as to become equally inexistent de facto. Our book examined what these two notable firsts had to do with each other. We claimed that it was no coincidence that the first Australian poet – the first person to have laid claim to that title, and indeed to have invented that category – was also the first legislator of terra nullius. Through close readings of the six poems that made up Field’s book from its second edition in 1823 – the first edition of 1819 contained just two poems – we argued that, far from being merely supplemental to his legal reformulation of the basis of colonisation, poetry was in fact instrumental to Field’s program to re-establish New South Wales on a new constitutional footing premised counterfactually on the non-existence of Aboriginal societies. To revert to a famous tag by Percy Shelley to which we paid considerable attention in the book: this poet really was the unacknowledged legislator of white Australia. In this foundational moment, the liberal colonial regime that underpinned future national development was poetic, we claimed, in inspiration, design and operation.'  (Introduction)

1 1 Notes on Bad Poetry Thomas H. Ford , 2023 single work essay
— Appears in: Cordite Poetry Review , 1 September no. 110 2023;

'Maybe we’ll always disagree about poetry – about how it works, and what it’s for; about its modalities and affordances; about what makes a good poem; about why you might want to write or read one. For as long as anyone can remember, the poetry scene has been characterised by clashing opinions. In this bewildering proliferation of disagreements, the sheer existence of bad poems offers a rare point of consensus. For as we all know, bad poems exist. I’ve read them. You’ve read them. Some of us might even have written a few. And we can all agree they suck. That there are bad poems is a critical fact so empirically incontestable as to verge on the axiomatic. It is as if, in our efforts to come to grips with poetry, we have here – at last! – touched on something irrefragable, recalcitrant, certain.' (Introduction)

1 7 y separately published work icon Barron Field in New South Wales : The Poetics of Terra Nullius Thomas H. Ford , Justin Clemens , Melbourne : Melbourne University Press , 2023 25544651 2023 single work biography

'What does the first poetry in Australia, written by the Judge who declared the land terra nullius, tell us about the singular nature of colonialism here?

'On 24 February 1817, Barron Field sailed into Sydney Harbour on the convict transport Lord Melville to a ceremonial thirteen-gun salute. He was there as the new Judge of the Supreme Court of Civil Judicature in New South Wales - the highest legal authority in the turbulent colony. Energetic and gregarious, Field immediately set about impressing his vision of a future Australia as a liberal and prosperous nation. He courted the colony's leading figures, engaged in scientific research and even founded Australia's first bank. He also wrote poetry: in 1819, he published First Fruits of Australian Poetry, the first book of poems ever printed in the country. In England, Field had been the theatre critic for The Times, and a friend of such major Romantic writers as William Wordsworth, Charles Lamb and Leigh Hunt. In New South Wales, he saw the chance to become a major figure himself…' (Publication summary)

1 y separately published work icon Covid on the Brain Thomas H. Ford on the Irresistible Rise of ‘brain Fog’ Thomas H. Ford , James Jiang (presenter), 2022 24620769 2022 single work podcast

'Few phrases captured the atmosphere of lethargy and disorientation in which many of us lived under lockdown as much as ‘brain fog’. The term has come to denote a whole range of symptoms – from fatigue and forgetfulness to anxiety and an inability to focus – that serve as an historical marker for our Covid moment. Yet, as literary scholar Thomas H. Ford observes, the malaise is far from unique to the twenty-first century. In this episode of The ABR Podcast, listen to Ford as he traces the history of cognitive fuzziness, revealing the persistent concerns about mental overwork for which ‘brain fog’ is only the latest diagnosis.'  (Production summary))

1 Barron Field’s Terra Nullius Operation Thomas H. Ford , Justin Clemens , 2019 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Humanities Review , November no. 65 2019;
'Barron Field, who is today a largely forgotten figure, was from 1817 to 1824 the highest judge in New South Wales. His place in literary history rests on his First Fruits of Australian Poetry of 1819, which, as the title announces, was the first book of poetry to be published in this country. But by most accounts Field was a mediocre judge and a worse poet. John McLaren writes of the legal career that ‘Field’s record as a judge could best be described as mercurial, a reflection of his conservative belief system, a commitment to the culture of English law, and an opportunistic streak in his character…. Field’s counsel was not invariably sound or in keeping with the Colonial Office’s understanding of the legal proprieties’ (144). As for his poetry, even the colonial anthologists were wary of Field’s inclusion, although Vivian Smith has more recently been generous enough to judge Field’s poem ‘The Kangaroo’ to be ‘an exuberant oddity’ (74). Field also appears in a number of historical studies of colonial science and culture, where he tends however to remain a minor and rather ambiguous figure (Bernard Smith; Carter).' (Introduction)
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