'Eelahroo (Long Ago) Nyah (Looking) Möbö-Möbö (Future) is the most recent collection from Australia’s foremost experimental and political poet and one of the best known contemporary Aboriginal Australian writers, Lionel G. Fogarty.' (Source: Publisher's website)
'Thirty years after it was decided, the Mabo vs. Queensland case is remembered as a singularly defining landmark in the Aboriginal land rights movement and Australian political history. Ken Gelder and Jane Jacobs posited in 1995 that we live in a “post-Mabo Australia” of “unsettlement,” a “moment of decolonization, [where] what is 'ours' is also potentially, or even always already, 'theirs’” (171-172). In this article, I reconsider Mabo’s historical legacy through the writings of Lionel Fogarty, who has kinship connections to Wakka Wakka, Yoogum, and Mununjali peoples. Fogarty is rarely studied in the Mabo turn in Australian literature, perhaps in the view that his poetry is located within the ‘protest poetry’ of a pre-Mabo Australia. Born more than a decade before the 1967 referendum, Fogarty writes continuously about land rights through a poetic oeuvre spanning forty years, often from the perspective of his close personal involvement in activism. Fogarty unsettles the commemorative ethos with which Mabo is remembered, while inextricably tied to its memory. Fogarty’s resistance to monumentalisation can also be read as a guide to reading the poet’s own literary achievements in the decades before and after Mabo. By disrupting the commemorative impulse at the heart of Mabo, Fogarty renews the eventfulness and potential of another Mabo (and perhaps, another Fogarty): one that is always in-progress or unsettled, ‘a courtesy sustained’ and a ‘wave to turn.’' (Publication abstract)
'In a more perfect world (where there are fewer crippling complications) Stuart Cooke’s multi layered and lyrical verse translation of a Traditional Song Cycle would probably be what most of us would like First Nations literature to look like. It is a richly collaborative project bringing together the creative energies of Traditional Owners and a non-Indigenous academic and poet. Cooke’s book is a proud celebration of Nyigina Culture and Language and makes an invaluable contribution to Cultural maintenance. ...'
'In a more perfect world (where there are fewer crippling complications) Stuart Cooke’s multi layered and lyrical verse translation of a Traditional Song Cycle would probably be what most of us would like First Nations literature to look like. It is a richly collaborative project bringing together the creative energies of Traditional Owners and a non-Indigenous academic and poet. Cooke’s book is a proud celebration of Nyigina Culture and Language and makes an invaluable contribution to Cultural maintenance. ...'
'Thirty years after it was decided, the Mabo vs. Queensland case is remembered as a singularly defining landmark in the Aboriginal land rights movement and Australian political history. Ken Gelder and Jane Jacobs posited in 1995 that we live in a “post-Mabo Australia” of “unsettlement,” a “moment of decolonization, [where] what is 'ours' is also potentially, or even always already, 'theirs’” (171-172). In this article, I reconsider Mabo’s historical legacy through the writings of Lionel Fogarty, who has kinship connections to Wakka Wakka, Yoogum, and Mununjali peoples. Fogarty is rarely studied in the Mabo turn in Australian literature, perhaps in the view that his poetry is located within the ‘protest poetry’ of a pre-Mabo Australia. Born more than a decade before the 1967 referendum, Fogarty writes continuously about land rights through a poetic oeuvre spanning forty years, often from the perspective of his close personal involvement in activism. Fogarty unsettles the commemorative ethos with which Mabo is remembered, while inextricably tied to its memory. Fogarty’s resistance to monumentalisation can also be read as a guide to reading the poet’s own literary achievements in the decades before and after Mabo. By disrupting the commemorative impulse at the heart of Mabo, Fogarty renews the eventfulness and potential of another Mabo (and perhaps, another Fogarty): one that is always in-progress or unsettled, ‘a courtesy sustained’ and a ‘wave to turn.’' (Publication abstract)
