Lionel Fogarty


Lionel Fogarty is an Indigenous Australian poet and political activist.

Life and career

Fogarty was born in 1958 at Barambah in Queensland, where he grew up.
He has been involved in Aboriginal activism from his teenage years, mainly in Southern Queensland on issues such as, Aboriginal health and deaths in custody. His brother, Daniel Yock died at the hands of police, in the back of a police van shortly after being arrested, in 1993. His poetry, while in no way dismissible as simply 'political poetry', can be seen as an extension of these activities on another front. Common themes are the maintenance of traditional Aboriginal culture and the everyday realities of European occupation. Among the most 'experimental' of contemporary Australian poetry, his work has sometimes been described as 'surrealist'. Certainly large amounts of Indigenous Language, which white Australians sometimes find confronting, are employed but in part as an attempt to further dialogue between Australian cultures.
Fogarty has been involved with not-for-profit poetry organisation, The Red Room Company, participating in Unlocked, a program for inmates in New South Wales correctional centres, as well its creative projects including Clubs and Societies and The Poet's Life Works.

Published works