Giramondo mourns the passing of Lionel Fogarty: poet, artist, warrior

Lionel Fogarty was born on Wakka Wakka land, at Cherbourg Aboriginal Reserve in south-east Queensland in 1957. An internationally renowned Mununjali poet, he worked as an activist for Aboriginal Land Rights in the 1970s, and in the 1990s, after the death of his brother Daniel Yock, as a leading figure in protests against Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. His poetry collections date from the early 1980s; Harvest Lingo, his fourteenth collection, was published by Giramondo in 2022. It won the Judith Wright Calanthe Award for Poetry, and was shortlisted for the Prime MInister’s Poetry Award, and the NSW and Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. In 2025 Lionel received the prestigious Red Ochre Award for Lifetime Achievement. He died on 12 February 2026, at the age of 68.

At the time of his passing Lionel was working on his latest collection, Warrior with a Fighting Stick. He was that warrior, and in his poetry and painting, language was his fighting stick.

Here are two powerful poems from his most recent collection Harvest Lingo.

A First Note About the Regions

I opened the door that
Morning to the horror of society
Sis we got to pay another 250
To get our brother’s coffin to the church
We already given all we got

Intruder Wants the Writer

To write as a child to be a man
No boxes of childhood voice
my present, writing details.
No hidden child backward growing up
gains my learned on the road sky.
Future’s song dance lit pen friends for me in evenings
Not one sort of personal fireworks voice,
gave rise to the now existence dared.
Reluctance response by these ages,
Spare me not remorseful teenage pandemonium.
Pare her tempest defiant with red yellow brown ochre.
Breathe well inside the walls of rooms helplessly undecided.
No baby’s cries touch my raiment saddest crutch lost of mum’s death. Those life survivals by childhood happenings are snapped
by swine trample readership.
Embellishing more than needed.