Vale Lionel Fogarty

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.

Two poems from his powerful last collection, Harvest Lingo, have been published on the Giramondo website.

An obituary has also been published in the National Indigenous Times.