Longlisted for the 2024 Stella Prize
Ali Cobby Eckermann – She is the Earth
Poetry · Magabala Books
About the Book
She is the Earth charts a journey through grief and celebrates the healing power of Country. We follow Eckermann’s soft footfalls in the open (but far from empty) spaces between earth and sky; from sandstone to wetlands, from plains to mountain ranges.
Eckermann’s writing soars in this meditative and transformative piece. Soaked in lightness and dark, history and dreaming, her words will move you, shake you, devastate you and uplift you. This book is full of unexpected beauty in slow, contemplative moments. Read it to see the “She” in and around all of us.
“A writer at the height of her powers.”
– 2024 Stella Prize Judges
About the Author
Ali Cobby Eckermann
Ali Cobby Eckermann is a Yankunytjatjara poet and artist from South Australia whose work has been published and celebrated around the world. Her poetry collections include little bit long time and the award-winning collection Inside My Mother. Her verse novels are His Father’s Eyes and Ruby Moonlight, which won the inaugural black&write! Indigenous fellowship, the Kenneth Slessor Prize, a Deadly Award and was named the NSW Premier’s Literary Award Book of the Year. In 2013 Ali toured Ireland as Australia’s Poetry Ambassador, and in 2017 she received the Windham-Campbell Prize from Yale University.
She describes herself as a dreamer, a gardener, with deep respect for her journey thus far.
Further Reading
Reviews
“She is the Earth is unlike any other book in Australian literature. Of the works Eckermann has written to date, it could well prove her most enduring.” Aidan Coleman, The Conversation
Links
Sian Cain reviews She is the Earth and includes as one of the best Australian books out in May 2023.
Judges’ Report
Equal parts vague and implicit, singular and epic, Cobby Eckermann’s verse novella, She is the Earth, charts poignant, traumatic, healing territory – harnessing the compact power of its minimalist verse to evoke the vast unknown of land and sky, relation and place, knowledge and affect. Epic in purpose and epic in scope, this is a work that demands immersion – never once badgering, yet always occupying its own dignified territory with the deepest form of love for Country, offering insight with philosophical attention.
It is difficult to summarise the 90 short poems, where mother and child, totem and story, country and character combine to generate a distinct poetic idiolect, more music than meaning and still, remaining cohesive. This is work steeped in identity, longing and knowledge. She is the Earth is a deceptively complex work, despite its minimalism, which pushes at the limits of form and cognisance, to deliver capacious affect.
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