The publication of this collection marks a retrospective moment for the Australian literary landscape. Yoogum and Kudjela Lionel Fogarty, born in South Burnett in Southern Queensland, is a poet praised by John Kinsella as ‘the greatest... more
The publication of this collection marks a retrospective moment for the Australian literary landscape. Yoogum and Kudjela Lionel Fogarty, born in South Burnett in Southern Queensland, is a poet praised by John Kinsella as ‘the greatest living “Australian” poet’ (2013, 190). The controversial writer, Colin Johnston, also described Fogarty in 1990 as ‘Australia’s strongest poet of Aboriginality’ (26). I mention Johnston’s voice above others in this review to juxtapose Johnston’s and Fogarty’s fortunes in the last two decades as somewhat tragic and ironic. In this way, I write in heed of the deeply tenuous position Johnston occupies in publishing and scholarship (as explored in depth by Anita Heiss in Dhuuluu-Yala: To Talk Straight). In the 1990s, Heiss posits, ‘Johnson published Writing from the Fringe: A Study of Modern Aboriginal Literature. At the time he was regarded as the authority on Aboriginal writing, and anything associated with it’ (4). As Johnston's authority to speak on Aboriginal Australian issues was questioned, the question of Aboriginal identity in literature remained marred by decades of false claims and appropriation. Within these debates, it is possible we have overlooked another candidate. Despite the earlier praise, Fogarty might be the most unrewarded, or even unrecognized figure in the literary landscape.
