Cirrus@Austlit

'My copy of Barron Field in New South Wales: The Poetics of Terra Nullius came adorned with a blue and white sticker from the Australian Booksellers Association, proclaiming the book as a ‘staff favourite’. Although a complex and demanding book, it is not hard to see its appeal for an Australian audience. Ford and Clemens offer a detailed analysis of the first collection of poetry published in Australia, Barron Field’s First Fruits of Australian Poetry (1819). Far from treating Field’s collection as a historical curiosity, the poetry serves as a launching pad for the authors’ wide-ranging and innovative discussion of the origins of colonial Australia and its fraught relationship with Australia’s Aboriginal people.'  (Introduction)