'Harvest Lingo is the fourteenth collection of poems by Lionel Fogarty, a Murri man with traditional connections to the Yugambeh people from south of Brisbane and the Kudjela people of north Queensland. He is a leading Indigenous rights activist, and one of Australia’s foremost poets, and this collection displays all of the urgency, energy and linguistic audacity for which Fogarty is known.
'At the centre of the collection is a series of poems written in India. Deeply empathetic, these poems are remarkable for the connections they draw between the social problems the poet encounters in this country poverty, class division, corruption and those he sees in contemporary Australia, besetting his own people.
'Other poems tell of encounters between people and between cultures, address historical and cultural issues and political events, and pay tribute to important Indigenous figures. There are intensely felt lyrics of personal experience, and poems which contemplate Fogarty’s own position as a poet and an activist, speaking with and for his community.
'Fogarty’s poems are bold and fierce, at times challenging and confronting, moved by strong rhythms and a remarkable freedom with language. They are an expression of the ‘harvest lingo’ which gives the collection its title.' (Publication summary)
Author's note: I dedicate this book to the revolutionary Aborigines
up-and-coming new writers
and worldwide Indigenous writers.
'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)
'I am often asked why I consider Lionel Fogarty the ‘greatest living poet in Australia’, and his latest collection, Harvest Lingo—that I reviewed earlier this year for the Saturday Paper—gives me plenty to back up this claim.' (Introduction)
'If nothing else, Lionel Fogarty’s longevity as a poet should bring him to our attention. Kargun, his first work, was published forty-two years ago amid the ferment of utopian Black Panther politics, discriminatory legislation, and racialised police violence. Fogarty’s finest work, Ngutji, published in 1984, drew on his experience growing up in Cherbourg Aboriginal Settlement, but the breadth of his poetic vision was already evident. Some of the early poems such as ‘Jephson Street Brothers Who Had None’ and ‘Remember Something Like This’ originate in Fogarty’s experience of Cherbourg Aboriginal Mission and radical politics, but the poems’ truths are non-propositional and essentially human.' (Introduction)
'In his 14th collection, Harvest Lingo, Murri poet Lionel Fogarty continues his decades-long commitment to disrupting colonial language, colonial thought and their machineries of oppression. Fogarty creates poems in which language is liberated, feeding back against colonialism and strengthening languages that have been pressured by colonial linguistics. The relationship between speech and writing is constantly being bridged. But Fogarty’s stunning poiesis is much more than disruption: it also suggests new and generative ways of reading poetry across cultural spaces. The lingo of a locality is intrinsically tied into its collective identification and is a way of expressing community. Lingo may be familiar and particular, and in some ways exclusive. It can also be an imposition or co-opted by exploiters and thus become alienating. In Harvest Lingo it has many inflections.' (Introduction)
'In his 14th collection, Harvest Lingo, Murri poet Lionel Fogarty continues his decades-long commitment to disrupting colonial language, colonial thought and their machineries of oppression. Fogarty creates poems in which language is liberated, feeding back against colonialism and strengthening languages that have been pressured by colonial linguistics. The relationship between speech and writing is constantly being bridged. But Fogarty’s stunning poiesis is much more than disruption: it also suggests new and generative ways of reading poetry across cultural spaces. The lingo of a locality is intrinsically tied into its collective identification and is a way of expressing community. Lingo may be familiar and particular, and in some ways exclusive. It can also be an imposition or co-opted by exploiters and thus become alienating. In Harvest Lingo it has many inflections.' (Introduction)
'If nothing else, Lionel Fogarty’s longevity as a poet should bring him to our attention. Kargun, his first work, was published forty-two years ago amid the ferment of utopian Black Panther politics, discriminatory legislation, and racialised police violence. Fogarty’s finest work, Ngutji, published in 1984, drew on his experience growing up in Cherbourg Aboriginal Settlement, but the breadth of his poetic vision was already evident. Some of the early poems such as ‘Jephson Street Brothers Who Had None’ and ‘Remember Something Like This’ originate in Fogarty’s experience of Cherbourg Aboriginal Mission and radical politics, but the poems’ truths are non-propositional and essentially human.' (Introduction)
'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)
'I am often asked why I consider Lionel Fogarty the ‘greatest living poet in Australia’, and his latest collection, Harvest Lingo—that I reviewed earlier this year for the Saturday Paper—gives me plenty to back up this claim.' (Introduction)
