Dhoompoo
Lionel Fogarty

Born 1957 - Died 2026

Dhoompoo Lionel Fogarty was a Yugambeh man, poet, artist and activist, who was born on Wakka Wakka country at Barambah, the Cherbourg Aboriginal Reserve, near Murgon, Queensland. In the early 1970s he became involved in Indigenous rights, working with the Aboriginal Legal Service, Aboriginal Housing Service, Black Resource Centre, Black Community School and Murrie Coo-ee. He campaigned for land rights and protested against Aboriginal deaths in custody. He was the 2025 recipient of the Red Ochre Award for Lifetime Achievement in Artistic Excellence by Creative Australia.

Fogarty's first collection of poetry, Kargun, was published in 1980. He published a further thirteen volumes including the Scanlon Prize-winning Connection Requital (2010), Mogwie-Idan: Stories of the Land (2012), which won the Kate Challis RAKA Award, Eelahroo (Long Ago) Nyah (Looking) Mobo-Mobo (Future) (2014) and Harvest Lingo (2022), winner of Queensland Literary Awards – Judith Wright Calanthe Award for a Poetry Collection 2023.

More recently Fogarty's paintings had given visual presence to his experimental and politically charged poems. Interwoven with Indigenous languages which reflected his love for his people and Country, they tell of encounters between people and between cultures, address historical and cultural issues and political events, and pay tribute to important Indigenous figures. Fogarty’s painted poems are intensely felt, bold and fierce and at times challenging and confronting.

Fogarty’s writing demonstrates that he was a poet of language as much as of politics, repurposing both traditional poetics and the speech of his people to delineate circumstances of oppression alongside a vision of independent Aboriginal identity.

PUBLICATIONS

2022
Harvest Lingo, Giramondo, Sydney

2017
Lionel Fogarty Selected Poems: 1980 – 2017, re.press and Aboriginal Humanities Project, Melbourne

2014
Eelahroo (Long Ago) Nyah (Looking) Möbö-Möbö (Future), Vagabond Press, Sydney

2012
Mogwie Idan: Stories of the Land, Vagabond Press, Sydney

2010
Connection Requital, Sydney, Vagabond Press, Sydney

2008
YERRABILELA JIMBELUNG Poems About Friends and Family, with Yvette Walker and Kargun Fogarty, Keeaira Press, Southport, Queensland

2004
Minyung Woolah Binnung: What Saying Says, Keeaira Press, Southport, Queensland

1995
New and Selected Poems, Munaldjali, Mutuerjaraera. Hyland House, Melbourne

1990
Jagera, Murri Coo-ee, Spring Hill, Queensland

1984 Ngutji, (with illustrations by Lyn Briggs) Murri Coo-ee, Spring Hill, Queensland

1982 Yoogum Yoogum, Penguin, Melbourne

1980 Kargun, Murri Coo-ee, Spring Hill, Queensland

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YOURS IN STRUGGLE The documentary from Dhoompoo Lionel Fogarty

Snoring Roars productions

YOURS IN STRUGGLE
The documentary from Dhoompoo Lionel Fogarty