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Image courtesy of publisher's website.
y separately published work icon Singing the Coast single work   prose  
Issue Details: First known date: 2010... 2010 Singing the Coast
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Most Australians live on the narrow coastal strip that fringes our island continent. For Aboriginal people a place comes into being each time it is sung, and it is through this process that places are learned about and cared for. These songs can be for all of us, in the places where Aboriginal stories are rapidly overwritten with grids of roads and towns.

Together Perkins and Somerville explore one coastal group's experience in maintaining the stories and songs of their country: Perkins' Gumbaynggirr homeland in mid-north coast New South Wales. These stories and songs are unique in their particularities, yet universal in their sense of knowledge, understanding and openness to sharing.

By taking up the metaphor of singing to capture a quality of voice, Perkins and Somerville show us how to share the land and its stories throughout Australia.' (From the publisher's website.)

Teaching Resources

Teaching Resources

This work has teaching resources.

Teachers' notes via publisher's website.

Notes

  • Dedication: For Gumbaynggirr people past and present who inhabit No Mans Land differently.
  • Includes transcriptions (in story and poetry form) of the oral traditions of the Gumbayngirr people.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Canberra, Australian Capital Territory,: Aboriginal Studies Press , 2010 .
      image of person or book cover 340395477644217907.jpg
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: xiv, 240p., [16]p. of platesp.
      Description: illus., map, ports
      Note/s:
      • Contains brief comments by Gary Foley, Deborah Bird Rose, Dr Greg Blyton and Dr Barry Morris.
      • Includes index and bibliography.
      • Includes notes on language.
      ISBN: 9780855757113 (pbk)

Works about this Work

The Poetics of Weather / Studies in Creativity Kim Satchell , 2013 single work criticism
— Appears in: TEXT Special Issue Website Series , October no. 20 2013;

'In this essay, I consider the poetics of the weather and studies in creativity, as a site to develop emplaced relations for a multi-species sense of place and research methods for place-based inquiry. I take up the theme of this TEXT Special Issue, ‘Writing creates ecology: Ecology creates writing’ as a conversation seeking generative responses to current dilemmas in terms of both ecology and higher learning. The context of the broader conversation sustains a personal inquiry that is quite specific and particular. The relationship I have to the work and that, to which it speaks, is intimate and lived. The themes woven into the piece are in tension with an individual and collective responsibility to respond to the more-than-human world in ecological crisis. The work is in progress, speculative and open-ended; I embody the work not merely as another project but as seeking a manner of life to live. The focus of these concerns can be summarised as revolving around varied forms of attention, modes of inquiry and modes of address. The material is accumulative and accretive, predicated upon the continuity of self-directed field and archival work, undertaken in the form of experimental philosophy, creative writing and living.The manner of writing is multimodal, non-linear, fractal, writing ecology as the resonance of a place from which the ecology emerges in the writing, reliant upon a recursive and synergistic recollection of fragments, shards, uneven and jagged pieces to formulate a whole. The ecological imagination at work morphs into a substantive form of creativity, as an everyday practice making sense and making art, as ecology and as cultural memory.' (Author's abstract)

[Review] Singing the Coast Zora Simic , 2012 single work review
— Appears in: Journal of Australian Studies , June vol. 36 no. 2 2012; (p. 261-262)

— Review of Singing the Coast Margaret Somerville , Tony Perkins , 2010 single work prose
Sing Me Byron Bay Kim Satchell , 2012 single work criticism
— Appears in: Continuum : Journal of Media & Cultural Studies , vol. 26 no. 2 2012; (p. 249-259)
'The stories of everyday life traverse the crossroads of perception and experience. They give voice to the inner contours of a reflected cosmos whose whirls they follow. They undulate with the moving world in which they seek to live, survive and know intimacy. Stories are the navigations of people whose vulnerabilities plumb unknown depths, whose sea anchors seek to moderate the tumultuous events and circumstances of life. On occasion, they surf as a slide of supreme pleasure. The narratives they follow and the spaces they embody are critical to any understanding of the conditions of everyday life, including the daily life of academics. In the context of this paper, creative research practice offers an emergent form of cultural studies, engaging the world in more descriptive and speculative terms.' (Author's abstract)
Untitled Steve Morelli , 2011 single work review
— Appears in: Aboriginal History , November no. 35 2011; (p. 221-224)

— Review of Singing the Coast Margaret Somerville , Tony Perkins , 2010 single work prose
Book Reviews : Singing the Coast Maya Ward , 2011 single work review
— Appears in: The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education , no. 40 2011; (p. 127-128)

— Review of Singing the Coast Margaret Somerville , Tony Perkins , 2010 single work prose
[Review] Singing the Coast Anastasia Gonis , 2010 single work review
— Appears in: Bookseller + Publisher Magazine , May/June vol. 89 no. 8 2010; (p. 43)

— Review of Singing the Coast Margaret Somerville , Tony Perkins , 2010 single work prose
Armchair Journey Bruce Elder , 2010 single work review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 13-14 November 2010; (p. 5) The Age , 13 November 2010; (p. 5)

— Review of Singing the Coast Margaret Somerville , Tony Perkins , 2010 single work prose
Untitled Pauline Curby , 2011 single work review
— Appears in: Reviews in Australian Studies , vol. 5 no. 2 2011;

— Review of Singing the Coast Margaret Somerville , Tony Perkins , 2010 single work prose
Connecting Histories Terri-Ann White , 2011 single work review
— Appears in: History Australia , vol. 8 no. 2 2011;

— Review of Singing the Coast Margaret Somerville , Tony Perkins , 2010 single work prose
Book Reviews : Singing the Coast Maya Ward , 2011 single work review
— Appears in: The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education , no. 40 2011; (p. 127-128)

— Review of Singing the Coast Margaret Somerville , Tony Perkins , 2010 single work prose
Sing Me Byron Bay Kim Satchell , 2012 single work criticism
— Appears in: Continuum : Journal of Media & Cultural Studies , vol. 26 no. 2 2012; (p. 249-259)
'The stories of everyday life traverse the crossroads of perception and experience. They give voice to the inner contours of a reflected cosmos whose whirls they follow. They undulate with the moving world in which they seek to live, survive and know intimacy. Stories are the navigations of people whose vulnerabilities plumb unknown depths, whose sea anchors seek to moderate the tumultuous events and circumstances of life. On occasion, they surf as a slide of supreme pleasure. The narratives they follow and the spaces they embody are critical to any understanding of the conditions of everyday life, including the daily life of academics. In the context of this paper, creative research practice offers an emergent form of cultural studies, engaging the world in more descriptive and speculative terms.' (Author's abstract)
The Poetics of Weather / Studies in Creativity Kim Satchell , 2013 single work criticism
— Appears in: TEXT Special Issue Website Series , October no. 20 2013;

'In this essay, I consider the poetics of the weather and studies in creativity, as a site to develop emplaced relations for a multi-species sense of place and research methods for place-based inquiry. I take up the theme of this TEXT Special Issue, ‘Writing creates ecology: Ecology creates writing’ as a conversation seeking generative responses to current dilemmas in terms of both ecology and higher learning. The context of the broader conversation sustains a personal inquiry that is quite specific and particular. The relationship I have to the work and that, to which it speaks, is intimate and lived. The themes woven into the piece are in tension with an individual and collective responsibility to respond to the more-than-human world in ecological crisis. The work is in progress, speculative and open-ended; I embody the work not merely as another project but as seeking a manner of life to live. The focus of these concerns can be summarised as revolving around varied forms of attention, modes of inquiry and modes of address. The material is accumulative and accretive, predicated upon the continuity of self-directed field and archival work, undertaken in the form of experimental philosophy, creative writing and living.The manner of writing is multimodal, non-linear, fractal, writing ecology as the resonance of a place from which the ecology emerges in the writing, reliant upon a recursive and synergistic recollection of fragments, shards, uneven and jagged pieces to formulate a whole. The ecological imagination at work morphs into a substantive form of creativity, as an everyday practice making sense and making art, as ecology and as cultural memory.' (Author's abstract)

Last amended 17 Sep 2019 12:24:44
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