Lionel Fogarty’s Selected Poems 1980 – 2017 was launched last night in Bella Union, Trades Hall, Melbourne.  The fine academic, Philip Morrissey write that Lionel “Fogarty would agree that he is in a conventional sense unlettered. Initially he wrote down the poetry he heard or visualised in his mind, but he couldn’t read his own writings once he had written it down.  In order to communicate this poetry he had to ‘learn’ English with the aid of a dictionary.  It could be said that ‘he learned Engilsh backwards’, starting with poetry and moving back to grammar rather than vice versa.  His poetry is constructed from the weight of words and silences rather than in recognisable syntactical or metrical units”.

This is the first poem in this new anthology.

Insane Go Away, Sane Come Again

Rock you belong to?
Sand we want you?
Land you know now
Words we are afraid of
Animals you’re sane
Skies eyes sees
Clouds cry can’t see
Sees mostly easy but uneasy
Short and long life
Strangled around earth
in four ways
Soon will make us sane.
Ongoing rock, sand, land
whites betrayed living sands
Animals, skies, clouds, seas
whites must go away.
You      we      me
Earth shouts now
Four ways
oppressed people
Unity
in rushing four winds