Review of Les Murray's "On Bunyah" by Phillip Hall

Excellent and honest review of On Bunyah by Phillip Hall. Especially his correction of the ongoing colonialism and privileging of ownership of this country.

"The custodianship of First Nations should not be written of as just another invasion of pristine wilderness and Murray might like to write of his family’s Bunyah occupation as having begun in “the Eden of the country” (96) and in “Bible times” (36) but it did not; it came after Indigenous peoples (and only at the cost of their dispossession)."

Phillip Hall is a poet working as an editor with Verity La’s “Emerging Indigenous Writers Project” and as a poetry reader at Overland. In 2014 he published Sweetened in Coals. In 2015 he published Diwurruwurru, a book of his collaborations with the Borroloola Poetry Club. He is currently working on a collection of place-based poetry called Fume. This project celebrates Indigenous people & culture in the Northern Territory’s Gulf of Carpentaria.

 

http://plumwoodmountain.com/phillip-hall-reviews-on-bunyah-by-les-murray/