AustLit

'Even as he forges his own style, Vincent Namatjira celebrates the traditions of his great-grandfather Albert Namatjira. By Maddee Clark.'

'“Hopefully the worst was behind me: detox, collecting Gertrude’s ashes, London, the twenty-four-hour flight, aeroplane food, customs, sniffer dogs. All I had to do now was survive the rest of my life. Which was no small order, of course.”' 

'John Clare was the great poet of “enclosure”. Unlike other major Romantic writers, he was of the peasantry – he lived through a period during which lands once held for the benefit of all were privatised in the name of “improving” agricultural productivity. Such commons were fenced off and patrolled against encroachment:

'There once were lanes in nature’s freedom dropt,

There once were paths that every valley wound –

Inclosure came, and every path was stopt;

Each tyrant fix’d his sign where paths were found,

To hint a trespass now who cross’d the ground…' (Introduction)