AustLit

Author's note: 'Anatomy of the Perfect Delusion' was written partly in response to Elizabeth Durack's impersonation of an Aboriginal painter, the fictional Eddie Burrup.

In the early months of 1997, this event was followed shortly after by a prize-winning novel by an Aboriginal woman, Wanda Kilmatrie [sic], which was revealed to be the work of Leon Carmen, a white man of non-Aboriginal heritage. Unmistakably, the theft of identity seemed to cause more hurt than the financial motive involved, to the Aboriginal community.

I later revised the poem in a way that included the bombing of the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon on September eleventh, 2001. (The Colosseum, p. 78)