In her memoir Too Afraid to Cry, published in 2013, Indigenous poet Ali Cobby Eckermann related how she had been tricked away from her mother as a baby, repeating the trauma her mother had suffered when she was taken from her grandmother many years before. Eckermann in turn had to give her own child up for adoption. In her new poetry collection, Inside my Mother, she explores the distance between the generations created by such experiences, felt as an interminable void in its darkest aspects, marked by sadness, withdrawal, yearning and mistrust, but in other ways a magical place ‘beyond the imagination’, lit by dreams and visions of startling intensity, populated by symbolic presences and scenes of ritual and commemoration, chief amongst them the separation and reunion of mother and child. Though the emotions are strong, they are expressed simply and with a sense of significance in nature which reminds one of the poetry of Oodgero Noonuccal, whose successor Eckermann is. About the Author Ali Cobby Eckerman’s first collections of poetry little bit long time and Kami (2010) both quickly sold out their first print runs. Her verse novel His Father’s Eyes was published by OUP in 2011. Her second verse novel Ruby Moonlight won the inaugural kuril dhagun National Manuscript Editing Award and the 2013 NSW Premier’s Literary Award for Poetry and Book of the Year Award.
Author
Ali Cobby Eckermann is a Yankunytjatjara / Kokatha kunga (woman) born on Kaurna land in 1963. As a baby Ali was adopted into the Eckermann family. After failed attempts she was assisted by Link Up to find her mother Audrey, and four years later her son Jonnie. Her journey was supported by many members of the Stolen Generations. She regularly visits her traditional family in rural and remote South Australia; to learn and to heal. After nearly thirty years in the Northern Territory, Ali chooses to live in the ‘intervention-free’ village of Koolunga, South Australia, where she is renovating the old general store and establishing an Aboriginal Writers Retreat. Ali Cobby Eckermann enjoyed great success with her first collection of poetry, little bit long time. Her poetry reflects her journey to reconnect with her Yankunytjatjara / Kokatha family. Other collections include Kami and Love Dreaming and Other Poems, published by Vagabond Press. Her first verse novel, His Father’s Eyes, was published in 2011 by Oxford University Press. Her second verse novel, Ruby Moonlight, published by Magabala Books, won the 2011 inaugural kuril dhagun Manuscript Editing Award and the 2012 Deadly Award for Outstanding Achievement in Literature. She has been featured on Poetica, ABC Message Stick, and on the Poetry International Website. In 2010 she performed at the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival in Bali, and in 2012 at the Reaching The World Summit in Bangkok, Thailand. Too Afraid to Cry is her much anticipated memoir.
