Project Description

Banished Now From My Native Shore is a contemporary reimagining of some of Australia's most striking convict poetry.

We need your help to breathe some fresh air into one of Australia's most important bodies of convict poetry. Banished Now From My Native Shore: The Verse of Frank The Poet is a compilation album featuring some of Australia's best and brightest musicians who are tasked with composing a song using a poem written by convict bard known as Frank The Poet.

The songs will be compiled and released by our team of volunteers here at Adelaide based community record label Stobie Sounds in a celebration of Australia's early colonial 'roots music'. You can learn more about us over at our website and learn more about this project and Frank The Poet HQ.

Our fundraising drive will culminate in a concert on 11 February 2012 at the Wheatsheaf Hotel, Thebarton featuring The Yearlings, Max Savage and the False Idols and The Tea House Fire. You can pre-purchase a ticket but donating $20 to this cause. Easy! Your donations can also snag you a copy of the final album or tickets to the launch party or even a handprinted stobie sounds house party tea towel. Check out the rewards on offer over there on the right.

The dozen or so verses by Frank The Poet give us a no holds barred look at the life of a convict under the tyranny of the colonial ruling class in the 19th Century

Frank The Poet (AKA Francis McNamara) was transported to Australia from Ireland in 1832 for the crime of stealing a plaid, or so the court records say. Not three months after landing in Sydney for his seven years in servitude Frank had once again fallen foul of the law and so began a life of hard labour, incarceration, laceration, agitation … and writing some of Australia's most striking poetry. 12 poems now attributed to Frank were stored safely in the oral histories, family scrap books and libraries of eastern Australia throughout much of the 19th and 20th centuries until 1979, when folklorists Rex Whalan and John Meredith pieced together the poems and true identity of Frank the Poet.

We've managed to get the album 90% finished under our own steam. With your help we'll be able to get this important celebration of Australia's own roots music released.

This project is being run by the volunteers at Stobie Sounds, Adelaide's not-for-profit roots record label. All money from goes toward making sure this album is top notch. All proceeds from the sale of the album will go back to artists and supporting the Australian roots music scene.