In this chapter, Philip Mead analyses the historical and linguistic conditions in which Lionel Fogarty emerged as a writer. By situating Fogarty’s work within the context of his upbringing, Mead contextualises Fogarty’s literary achievements in ways that clarify and deepen the interventions in subsequent chapters. By demonstrating the survival of forms of expression in what Mead calls “reserve language,” the chapter explores the dissonant, complex, disruptive language of Fogarty’s poetry in relation to the authoritarian, assimilative regime of the reserve where he grew up and was educated.