'Tossed Up by the Beak of a Cormorant is a poetic collaboration between award-winning poet Nandi Chinna and Aboriginal elder Professor Anne Poelina. It explores the politics and the culture of one of Australia's last great unregulated waterways, the Martuwarra Fitzroy River.
'Martuwarra Fitzroy River is Australia's last great unregulated waterway. It is also a significant element of Australia's largest Indigenous heritage site and, for some, it also represents untapped revenue. When in flood, the river has the power to destroy communities and livelihoods. But above all, to Professor Anne Poelina, the mighty river is a venerated living ancestor who must be protected. This collaboration between award-winning poet Nandi Chinna and Anne Poelina - the elder who guided Nandi's
own relationship with the river - takes the reader on a journey of absorbing immersion and growing understanding as a conversation in poetry reveals the mighty river's beauty and vulnerability.' (Publication summary)
'In her fifth full-length poetry collection, Tossed up by the Beak of a Cormorant, Nandi Chinna continues to write about her engagement with the natural world. Authored in collaboration with Wagaba Nyikina Warrwa Elder, Anne Poelina, this book sees her move north and west into the Kimberley. This is where the Martuwarra (Fitzroy River) runs through Bunuba, Gooniyandi, Nyikina, Walmajarri, and Wangkatjungka Country. It is a place that poetry readers will recognise from the geographically proximate classic Reading the Country (1984) by Paddy Roe, Stephen Muecke, and Krim Bentarrak, Ngarla Songs (2003) by Alexander Brown and Brian Geytenbeek, and the ethnopoetic George Dyungayan’s Bulu Line (2014), edited by Stuart Cooke. With that in mind, Chinna’s Kimberley is a place that is remote for many readers, but not entirely unknown.' (Introduction)
'In her fifth full-length poetry collection, Tossed up by the Beak of a Cormorant, Nandi Chinna continues to write about her engagement with the natural world. Authored in collaboration with Wagaba Nyikina Warrwa Elder, Anne Poelina, this book sees her move north and west into the Kimberley. This is where the Martuwarra (Fitzroy River) runs through Bunuba, Gooniyandi, Nyikina, Walmajarri, and Wangkatjungka Country. It is a place that poetry readers will recognise from the geographically proximate classic Reading the Country (1984) by Paddy Roe, Stephen Muecke, and Krim Bentarrak, Ngarla Songs (2003) by Alexander Brown and Brian Geytenbeek, and the ethnopoetic George Dyungayan’s Bulu Line (2014), edited by Stuart Cooke. With that in mind, Chinna’s Kimberley is a place that is remote for many readers, but not entirely unknown.' (Introduction)
