Selected Poems of Ned Kelly

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by Nathanael O’Reilly

The poems in this collection were composed using only words that appear in the following texts attributed to the legendary, notorious, and infamous Irish-Australian bushranger Ned Kelly, who lived from 1854 to 1880: The Jerilderie Letter, The Cameron Letter, The Babington Letter and The O'Loghlen Letter.

The poems use Kelly's spelling and mimic his punctuation and capitalisation. This collection was partly inspired by Peter Carey's novel True History of the Kelly Gang and Ian Jones's biography Ned Kelly: A Short Life, along with the author's own visits to many of the important places in Kelly's short life, which form the setting for the poems.

The collection attempts to answer a simple question: what if Ned Kelly wrote poetry?

Published:
Publisher: Downingfield Press Poetry
Genres:
Poetry

Reviews:Stuart Barnes, poet. Like to the Lark (2023) and Glasshouses (2016) wrote:

'Borrow[ing]' from Kelly's letters, 'Wombat[-]clever' O'Reilly has moulded found poetry that is 'Fearless free and bold' as the Australian bushranger. His lines 'gallop' like the 'Stallion[s] the greatest horsestealer borrow[ed].'

Toby Davidson, poet and author of Good for the Soul: John Curtin's Life with Poetry wrote:

In Selected Poems of Ned Kelly, O'Reilly allows the famed outlaw's inventive sentences room to breathe and perform anew the rebelliousness which 'made the country ring / with the name of Kelly.


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About the Author

Nathanael O’Reilly is an Irish-Australian poet; he is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Texas at Arlington. His books include Boulevard (Beir Bua Press, 2021); (Un)belonging (Recent Work Press, 2020); BLUE (above/ground press, 2020); Preparations for Departure (UWAP, 2017), named a Book of the Year in Australian Book Review; Distance (Ginninderra Press, 2015); Suburban Exile (Picaro Press, 2011); and Symptoms of Homesickness (Picaro Press, 2010). More than 300 of his poems have appeared in journals & anthologies published in 14 countries. O’Reilly received an Emerging Writers Grant from the Literature Board of the Australia Council for the Arts in 2010 and has been a writer-in-residence at Booranga Writers’ Centre in Australia and All Saints Heritage Centre in Ireland. He has given invited readings in Australia, Canada, England, Hungary, Ireland, Italy and the United States. His poetry has been shortlisted and highly commended in competitions in Australia, Ireland and the United States. O’Reilly is the poetry editor for Antipodes: A Global Journal of Australian/New Zealand Literature.



Other Books By Nathanael O’Reilly