Vandemonian

By Cliff Forshaw

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arc Publications
• Release date: Jan 15, 2013
• ISBN: 9781908376251

Book preview

VANDEMONIAN

Previous poetry collections by Cliff Forshaw include:

Wake (Flarestack Poets, 2009)

Trans (The Collective Press, Wales, 2005)

Published by Arc Publications

Nanholme Mill, Shaw Wood Road

Todmorden OL14 6DA, UK

www.arcpublications.co.uk

Copyright © Cliff Forshaw 2013

The author asserts the moral right

to be identified as the author of this work.

Copyright in the present edition © Arc Publications 2013

Design by Tony Ward

Printed in Great Britain by the MPG Book Group,

Bodmin and King’s Lynn

978 1904614 60 9 (pbk)

978 1904614 72 2 (hbk)

978 1908376 25 1 (ebook)

Acknowledgements

Some of these poems first appeared in the following publications: The Common (USA); Famous Reporter (Australia); Light on Don Bank: Fifteen Years of Live Poets eds. Danny Gardner and Sue Hicks (Sydney: Live Poets’ Press, 2006); Mood Lightning ed. Ten Ch’in Û (Sydney: Imaginal Press, 2004); Poetry Wales; Sketches, Dispatches, Hull Tales and Ballads(Kingston Press, 2012); Tales of the Fox, CD (Trinity and All Saints College, Leeds, 2006). An earlier version of the sequence ‘Tiger’ appeared as a chapbook (HappenStancce, 2011). The sequence A Ned Kelly Hymnal appeared as a chapbook (A Paper Special Edition / Cherry on the Top Press, 2008). The Ned Kelly, Trucanini and William Lanne poems appeared as illustrated sequences on the web journal Enter Text 7.2 ‘Human Rights, Human Wrongs’ (Brunel University, 2007); ‘Loop’ appeared as a Carol Rumens Poem of the Week on The Guardian website.

The author would like to thank Joe Bugden and the Tasmanian Writers’ Centre, Hobart, for their hospitality during his very fruitful period as International Writer in Residence. He owes many of these poems to their Island of Resdiencies scheme. He would also like to thank Les Wicks, a great host on the mainland.

Cover image:

Detail from ‘The Conciliation’ (1840) by Benjamin Duttereau by kind permission of the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery.

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part of this book may take place without the written permission of Arc Publications.

UK Editor: John Clarke

for Mary

VANDEMONIAN

3925.png

Cliff Forshaw

Arc.TIF

2013

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

VANDEMONIAN

Landfall in Abel’s Garden

… and the Dreaming dreamed itself an island

in the shape of the human heart:

an unmoored rock, but fertile,

drifting way off from mainland

while wind and rain dissolved its shores.

And mists hung about its beaches,

caught themselves in trees, straggled

branches, blurring upland reaches.

Elsewhere