Unbelievers, or The Moor

JohnMateer's previous poetry book SouthernBarbarians traced the influence of the Portuguese empire in the IndianOcean it was shortlisted for the PM's Award for Poetry and the NSW andVictorian Premiers' Literary Awards. Unbelievers,or The Moor takes this exploration one step further, to recover its Arabicand Islamic origins in Al-Andalus, the Moorish state which occupied much ofpresent-day Spain and Portugal from the eighth to the fifteenth centuries. Aseat of learning and culture, which combined Muslim, Christian and Jewishinfluences, it provides a model for Mateer's own mixed background as a SouthAfrican Australian, and for his nomadic identity as a poet. The collection ismuch concerned with influential but invisible histories; with the poem as amoment of connection between languages and cultures, so that it seems alreadyto exist in translation; with doubles and hauntings, friends in far places, andabove all, what Mateer calls 'the irony of Elsewhere'.