More today from Ali Cobby Eckermann, recipient of the Windham-Campbell prize, to be conferred this September at Yale.

Ali spent much of her early adult life searching for her mother and her birth family, from  whom she was stolen.  Her search took her into the Central Australian desert where she was greeted by many Aboriginal women one of whom “leads me to where a larger group of old women are gathered.  They talk in language for a while and learn who my family is.  The old women laugh to celebrate that I made it back to my family.  The old women laugh because they have the skills to heal me.  The old women laugh because they are my family too. . . . . I can’t stop crying.  It is a mixture of release and joy.”

Ngankari

arms wrap around Nana
smell the campfire hair
seven sisters dance under
Pleiades all night

chanting and singing
laughing and joy
in the morning
big clean up time

women scramble in
Toyota dreaming
dust trails linger as
the girl waits

ochre signals ochre
ngankari ngankari
sickness is gone

you good now girl
go get the world

From “To Afraid to Cry” Ali Cobby Eckermann 2012