Cirrus@Austlit

'Despite having been named the ‘poet laureate’ of Aboriginal literature by author Alexis Wright and the ‘greatest living poet in Australia’ by poet John Kinsella, Lionel Fogarty’s poetry, previously published by small independent presses, has remained both critically and popularly underappreciated. I count myself as a relative newcomer to Fogarty’s work, but with the weight of his body of work growing, the publication of his fourteenth collection, Harvest Lingo by Giramondo, presents the perfect opportunity to become acquainted with Fogarty’s fiery and yet sophisticated poetics. As Fogarty reminds us in this collection, being a poet, let alone a black protest poet in Australia, is bloody ‘Hard Work’ (4). However, for those readers who are ready to roll up their sleeves, this collection offers a rich harvest indeed: lingo that unearths a sense of global solidarity through transit across cultural and linguistic boundaries, disrupting underlying assumptions that form the solid ground of the English language in the process.' (Introduction)