Vandemonian

Cliff Forshaw

• Publisher: Arc Publications
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781904614722
• eBook ISBN: 9781908376251
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Vandemonian is a detailed, impassioned poetic history of Van Dieman's land, Tasmania. Poems in a variety of voices lay out the island's early story, exploring the truths of colonisation. Forshaw blends historical fact, imagined events and contemporary reflection with religion, geography and the great unknown to produce a portrait of discovery, disenfranchisement and extinction."An imagination like no other, transforming the world you thought you knew"
Jon Stallworthy"These are poems captained by a large intelligence and abundant lexical vigour, poems of voyage, exertion and discovery."
Carol Rumens on Wake Cliff Forshaw now teaches at Hull University. A former winner of the Welsh Academi John Tripp Award, and Blue Nose Poet of the Year, his pamphlet Wake was joint-winner of the Flarestack Pamphlet Competition in 2009. His latest chapbook, Tiger (Happenstance, 2011), about the Tasmanian Tiger, came out of his term as International Writer-in-Residence at Hobart.

This book is also available as an ebook: buy it from Amazon for here.

The Shoal Bay Death Spirit Dreaming

After The Napperby Death Spirit Dreaming (1980): collaborative painting by Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri (c. 1932-2002) and his brother Tim Leura Tjapaljarri (1929-1984).

i.m. Mark Leabeater (1955-2005).

Somewhere between

the Mid-Winter Leaving Hobart Snooze

and the Mad Rush Nervous Sweat

Getting to the Airport Nightmare,

I fetch up in a Melbourne Museum

in front of The Napperby Death Spirit Dreaming.

I’m Cliff Forshaw, not Clifford Possum,

and, being somewhere between,

I haven’t got a clue what this

(so far from surf, sea, shore)

or anything else, might mean.

But I’m thinking back, and I’m looking out,

if not exactly forward,

to the any other business

end of the itinerant’s agenda.

The Arts Council warns that whites

have no rights to blackfellas’ stories.

But what about a title? What about a name?

Don’t we really all end up

in one of Dreamtime Cemetery’s

seven basic plots?

Not even the Aborigines

have been here ab origine,

but came hunting in packs,

along with the sniff of man’s best friend.

Among the kookaburras,

the flash of rosellas,

these poems may contain images

of deceased whitefellas.

¶

Ultimo in Arvo,

sounds li...

Table of contents

• Beginning
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Contents
• VANDEMONIAN
• Landfall in Abel’s Garden
• Lat. 43º
• The Man
• Black Line
• The Dog Line
• Dumb Cells
• Bird
• Suddenly One Sunday
• Trucanini
• The Ballad of William Lanne
• Funeral Rites
• REINCARNATED LIGHT
• TIGER
• Loop
• Barcode
• Old Hairy
• Quirk
• Star
• Roadkill
• In Inverted Commas
• Possum
• The Bottom Line
• Thylacinus Cynocephalus
• Shot
• DEVIL
• Night Road
• Blind Date
• Devil Sanctuary
• Epitaph
• Grunts
• Fox
• A NED KELLY HYMNAL
• Ned Kelly’s Eyes: I. Image
• II. Poster Boy
• III. P.R.
• IV. Whites
• V. Music Hall
• A Ned Kelly Hymnal
• Alternative Ending
• The Shoal Bay Death Spirit Dreaming
• Notes
• Biographical Note