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The Ancient Light of the Dead
Brief Description
The Ancient Light of the Dead is a casual stroll through the kind of eclectic village cemetery that each of us designs and builds over the course of a lifetime, and that each of us will one day inhabit. The 84 portraits in this collection are...
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The Ancient Light of the Dead
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The Ancient Light of the Dead is a lyrical collection of poetic portraits drawn from a lifetime of encounters across continents. Through vivid, fragmentary glimpses of ordinary and extraordinary lives, these poems explore memory, mortality, and the shared human journey.
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Description
The Ancient Light of the Dead is a casual stroll through the kind of eclectic village cemetery that each of us designs and builds over the course of a lifetime, and that each of us will one day inhabit.
The 84 portraits in this collection are drawn from fragmentary beams of light that crossed the author’s experience—beautiful people, plain ones, ugly ones, intelligent ones, stupid ones, accomplished ones, abject failures, bullies, victims, criminals, saints, cheats, heroes, children, cowards, liars—the rich, the poor, the defeated, the unbeaten, the brave, the aged.
Each person experienced his or her allotted share of fretting and strutting, with sound or fury or befuddlement, only to be heard no more. They lived in Australia, New Zealand, the West Indies, Canada, the USA, or Indian reservations in the American West—but in the end, they have come together in one person’s memory. Different roads, same destination.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9781761453311
Publisher: Hardie Grant Media
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 26 May 2026
Country: Australia
Imprint: Hardie Grant Media
Illustration: Text only
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Width: 135.0mm
Height: 210.0mm
Weight: 300g
Pages: 128
About the Author
Jeshel Forrester is a musician, author, academic, and legal advocate whose career spans creative arts, education, and social justice. Known for a life of perpetual motion, reinvention, and service, he treats home not as a fixed location but as a state of engaged, purposeful being. Described by the Notable People Project as a polymath who seamlessly blends artistic practice with advocacy, he has composed music, written fiction and poetry, taught at university level, and appeared before the United States Congress in support of justice initiatives, all guided by a strong ethical compass and a commitment to storytelling.
His work is grounded in a humanistic worldview that sees art, law, and education as interconnected tools for social understanding and change. Across his writing and music, he explores themes of memory, history, displacement, and redemption, often giving voice to overlooked or forgotten perspectives. Marked by a metamodern sensibility, his work engages the contradictions of contemporary life with both irony and sincerity, maintaining a steady belief in narrative as a means of connection, reflection, and healing.
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