Böcker av Ali Cobby Eckermann

A Visionary Poem by the Celebrated Aboriginal Australian Writer Ali Cobby EckermannAli Cobby Eckermann's sparse, visionary poem follows the contours of an Australian landscape and dreamscape, accompanied by magpie and owl, sun and moon, as well as a daughter named Blessing. With a reciprocity between inner and outer realities, She Is the Earth tells a story of becoming, "a ritual made of self."

In Too Afraid to Cry, Ali Cobby Eckermann-who was recently awarded the Windham-Campbell Prize, one of the most prestigious literary awards in the world-describes with searing detail the devastating effects of racist policies that tore apart Indigenous Australian communities and created the Stolen Generations of "adoptees," Aboriginal children forcibly taken from their birth families. Told at first through the frank eyes of a child whose life was irretrievably changed after being "adopted" into a German Lutheran family, Too Afraid to Cry braids piercingly lyrical verse with spare prose to tell an intensely personal story of abuse and trauma. After years of suffering as a dark-skinned "outsider," Eckermann reveals her courageous efforts to reconcile with her birth family and find acceptance within their Indigenous community. Too Afraid to Cry offers a mirror to America and Canada's own dark history of coerced adoption of Native American children, and the violence inflicted on our continent's Indigenous peoples.

In "Love dreaming & other poems" Cobby Eckermann bears witness to a deep commitment to her traditional kin, culture and language as she tells the story of her search for her family on the traditional Yankunytjatjara and Kokatha lands in the north west of South Australia. At the same time, she lays bare the ongoing effects of governmental policy and paternalism on Australia's indigenous peoples. Engaging with events around Alice Springs, these poems give firsthand witness to the 2007 Northern Territory Emergency Response by the Federal Government, commonly known as The Intervention, and its ongoing effects on regional and remote Indigenous communities. These poems lay open the complexity of the internal conflict felt among Aboriginal people today, as they constantly need to adjust to contemporary Australia.Cobby Eckermann notes, 'My times in the desert are my happiest, and the soft blanket felt when my traditional language is spoken around me, is a feeling of pure love.' This is a collection by one of Indigenous Australian poetry's most vital new voices, sung with two eyes wide open to the present reality without fear or prejudice, with an overflowing love and care for the future."These are the offerings of a writer who has journeyed with great determination through apparently irretrievable loss, through chaos, disintegration and desolation, who has harvested the gifts of insight and emotional and spiritual intelligence and compassion, and who now reveals these insights to the eyes and ears of others through lucid images and punchy language." Terry WhitebeachAli Cobby Eckermann has enjoyed huge success with her first collection of poetry little bit long time (Australian Poetry Centre, 2010) and Kami (Vagabond Press, 2010). Her poetry reflects her journey to reconnect with her Yankunytjatjara / Kokatha family. Her first verse novel His Father's Eyes was published by Oxford University Press in 2011. Her second verse novel Ruby Moonlight won the inaugural kuril dhagun National Manuscript Editing Award and will be published by Magabala Books in 2012. She established an Aboriginal Writers Retreat at her home in Koolunga, and advocates strongly for grassroots Aboriginal voices to be heard through literature. She has lived most of her adult life in Australia's Northern Territory.