The piece of poetry of place given below appears in ruby moonlight, a prize-winning collection of poems written by leading Indigenous poet Ali Cobby Eckerman, published by Magabala Books.
Catchment – Poetry of Place gives its deepest thanks to the poet for permission to reproduce this fine work here, from early on in a heartbreaking depiction of dispossession in colonial Australia.
Our gratitude also extends to the staff at Magabala Books, in Broome, for their support.
The evaluative piece which follows the text of the poem ‘Warning’ will be the first in a series of such essays.
All will discuss poetry focussed upon a sense of location, either as Western verse or as tanka.
May this new dimension to Catchment help to foster appreciation of leading poetry of place.
Perhaps this response may prompt further book sales through Magabala, as a foremost publisher of First Nations writing within Australia.
Hopefully it might also inspire creativity, resulting in new writing being submitted to Catchment.
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Warning
the old man and his wife
hold parliament with magpies
within the meeting circle
chatter is warbled with worry
the remainder of the tribe
wait in the shadows
their trust in tribal ways
is absolute
they watch in silence
ready to flee
the meeting erupts
in a bird storm
strange animals and pale men
burst from the river
Ali Cobby Eckermann
– ruby moonlight, first edition, Magabala Books, Broome WA, 2012, p. 9
Copyright © Ali Cobby Eckermann, 2012
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Poetry of Place as a Window Through Which to Give a Warning or Two: Ali Cobby Eckermann
Honoured as the Book of the Year in the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards back in 2013, prior to winning the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry in that same year, Ali Cobby Eckermann’s celebrated collection of free verse ruby moonlight describes itself as ‘a novel of the impact of colonisation in mid-north South Australia around 1880.’
In its first edition (published in 2012, by Magabala Books Aboriginal Corporation, in Broome, WA), the book’s back-cover blurb offers this additional background information:
In the mid-north of South Australia, on Ngadjuri land, a young Aboriginal woman survives the massacre of her entire family…
As a haunting example of poetry of place, ‘Warning’ appears fourth in a set of just under seventy pieces, none exceeding a single page in length.
Thought-provoking – challenging; indeed, devastating – in its focus on location, this establishing piece seems likely to provoke a grim blend of foreboding, anger and regret, with its impact enhanced by the deft use of symbolism, and even a fleeting, unexpected level of humour.
The poem dramatises the prospect of immediate and dire threat to Traditional Owners of Country, in northern South Australia, at a point of first contact, late in the Nineteenth Century.
Understated in tone, though prefiguring calamity, this scene-setting poem sees Eckermann – as a Yankunytjatjara woman – offering a stark ‘warning’ to a broad Australian readership.
The sense of danger inferred by the poem’s title is hinted at ominously throughout, before being brought home sharply at the end, in work so sparse and succinct.
With the massacre of a First Nations family group strongly implied, the ‘warning’ of the poem’s title will become a bitter reality all too soon.
The poet’s audience can immediately sense tension in this scenario, finding Indigenous leaders caught up in close discussion.
Showing other members of their family group waiting nearby, Ali Cobby Eckermann can playfully suggest that magpies could have been invited to this crucial dialogue, in preference to some of the other humans, placed not far away.
Having black and white birds help to ‘hold parliament’ may symbolise opposing views over prospects of danger, intensifying the anxiety felt regarding the safety of the people portrayed.
There is also the wry and unsettling suggestion that the decisions of any of these First Peoples were no more consequential to the impending invaders than the opinions of magpies.
Lean and spare, this poem is visually suggestive, painting a picture evocatively.
More than that, it is multi-levelled in its symbolism, hinting at twin viewpoints about its key issues.
Like the plumage of magpies, true debates range across contrasting shades, dark and light: this sense of variegated feathering suggests a larger dimension to Eckermann’s portrait of people at risk in country where they should remain safe.
After the growing sense of ‘warning’ that has developed throughout this piece, ‘the meeting erupts at first hint’.
A sense of ‘worry’ has already been identified, before any attack occurs, with Traditional Owners shown as ‘ready to flee’, even though (as we are assured) ‘their trust in tribal ways/ is absolute’.
When ‘strange animals and pale men/ burst from the river’, it is to catastrophic effect, as we are reluctantly compelled to imagine.
Seeing the next piece in ruby moonlight titled as ‘Ambush’ leaves no doubt, even if some readers may have opted not to absorb details given on the book’s back cover, in the hope of avoiding a spoiler…
Despite the initial light-hearted charm of its bird-based imagery, this key poem has quickly become as black-and-white as a magpie’s appearance, in terms of its sorry outcome, its moral challenge, once the danger prefigured by its title materialises.
Upon the unheralded arrival of white men on horseback, the magpies react suddenly to the risk posed, taking to the air chaotically in a ‘bird storm’: a graphic image of panic.
It is significant that no previous contact appears to have occurred, since both the pallid new humans and their ‘strange’ equines are described as if never having been encountered before: so traditional owners have given no provocation whatsoever, beyond daring to continue to exist on their own long-held land, now coveted by Euro invaders.
Some Twenty-first Century commentators still excuse historical massacres as products of a bygone era; while others deny that such atrocities took place at all.
Keith Windschuttle’s three-volume The Fabrication of Australian History (2002-2008) goes to extensive lengths to argue that Indigenous Australians were not victims of gross mistreatment in a variety of contexts.
While Ali Cobby Eckermann has not yet directly shown the actions of these ‘pale’ horsemen, within this piece itself, the depth and extent of their threat is graphically implied, across this early chapter from the larger verse novel, as they forcibly make claims on country, without right or recompense.
We may also come to appreciate that Ali Cobby Eckermann implies a second level of forewarning.
Both this short poem, and ruby moonlight overall, resonantly demand wider acknowledgement of unspeakable truths from our colonial past.
Like some of the finest poetry-of-place, this poem prompts further reflection about larger issues.
Another ‘warning’ is being aimed at readers, in other words, giving a reminder about the need to be honest in acknowledging hard truths in history, as magpie facts, white and black.
Practising poets will value the additional possibilities inherent in Eckermann’s trailblazing exploration of a location which prompts lines of thinking that are vital in both historical and contemporary terms.
In masterful work such as this, places fraught with angst are viewed through an open window, drawing past contexts into the present; without info-bombing or cultural appropriation — a new and compelling poetry of locale.
Rodney Williams
Editor, Catchment – Poetry of Place
Baw Baw Arts Alliance
Gunaikurnai Country
West Gippsland, Victoria