Modern and Contemporary Poetry and Poetics

Since the publication of his first poetry collection Kargun in 1980, Lionel Fogarty has produced some of the most complex, playful and strident poems written in English, and has been regarded by some as the greatest Aboriginal Australian poet of his generation. While over the course of his career, Fogarty has had relatively little recognition in awards or grants, recent attention to his work suggests a new turn in how his poetry is read and understood in Australia and overseas. Emerging from these conversations, Lionel Fogarty in Poetry and Politics illuminates the craft and art of Fogarty’s poetry in hand with his political activism in order to open his work for new readers and researchers. Bringing together a wide range of critical and creative voices in the first book-length study of Fogarty’s work, this essay collection represents a landmark moment for the study of Indigenous studies, poetry and poetics, Australian literature, and for future work on Fogarty’s poetry.

Winner of the 2025 Australian University Heads of English Prize for Literary Scholarship. 

Magic and the Occult in Contemporary Poetry investigates the relationship between poetry and magic in the context of contemporary poetics. It traces the history of ‘magical poetics’ and the poetry of the occult to the present, in order to ask, in the context of contemporary US poetry, what potential there is for a magical poetics, or a poetics of the occult, today. The book argues that a magical or occult poetics offers a vital counterpoint to more mainstream poetic trends. It defines a magical or occult poetics in terms of the willingness of a poet to entertain a magical worldview for the purposes of writing poetry or the willingness to experiment with creative techniques and processes derived from magical or occult practices. It explores the allure of the poet as magician, the conceptualization of language as inherently magical, and the implications of adopting a magical perspective in poetic creation. It also delves into the specific creative techniques and processes central to magical and occult poetics, including the use of spellcraft, trance, divination, and ritual in the composition of poetry.