Loki Liddle’s brilliant debut is a lot of things. It’s a book of poetry. It’s a story of memory and identity. It’s a murder mystery about a bloodthirsty snake of light. It’s a grab-bag of delightfully niche pop-culture references. It’s a blast to read and most of all, it’s damn good television.

Just like its multi-talented author, Damn Good Television is impossible to pin down. As soon as you start to think you have it figured out, it slithers off in a completely different direction. It depicts a mythic world of tension and release, where beings of the land’s ancestral past stand in resistance to the idols of Western modernity – within the book’s first pages, the black glass of the television screen shatters and something older takes its place. That this force of the past possesses a young First Nations man and begins to rack up a body count hardly feels like a surprise – after all, the land and its people have some centuries-old scores to settle. Yet this revenge story just as quickly bleeds into scenes of Hollywood romance or poignant glimpses into Liddle’s own connection to the land as a Jabirr Jabirr man, each new poem refracting the narrative into some new perspective or striking image.

When assembled into a single book, the effect is bewildering yet entrancing, like channel surfing through a fever dream that does want to tell you something but isn’t that interested in making it easy for you. Holding it all together is Liddle’s voice itself, filling each page with a poetic rhythm that reflects his musical talents and a wry playfulness that welcomes the reader into this world of unbridled imagination. After such a thrilling debut, I can’t wait to see what Liddle does next – but in the meantime, I’ll be glad to rewatch some Damn Good Television.