Published: 2011
Commissioned in 2012 by Carl Crossin and the National Youth Chamber Choir of Australia, How Shall We Sing in a Strange Land juxtaposes Psalm 137:4 with “A Song of Hope” by Indigenous Australian poet and political activist Oodgeroo Noonuccal of the Quondamooka people. Both texts speak eloquently of alienation and displacement, and the juxtaposition of words by a First Nations poet with those of the Christian Bible’s Old Testament is both ironic and particularly powerful in the light of Australia’s colonial history.
