“Unemployed!”  The headline said “Unemployed”, as in

Unemployed Indigenous poet Ali Cobby Eckermann wins $215,000 literary prize

I was sitting in the back yard of my daughter’s home playing cricket with the kids – actually I was checking the paper when this headline caught my eye.  You would think it was the $$$$ that caught my eye, but no, it was the idea that Ali was “unemployed” that struck me as strange.

Fish Trap by Ali Cobby Eckermann

This is the woman I’ve known for quite some time, the woman who when she can’t write she paints, when she can’t paint she sculpts and when she can’t sculpt she goes back to writing.  All this whilst actively teaching, touring, speaking, performing, and caring for family and friends.

Ali was raised by a Lutheran family in South Australia’s mid north, not far from Clare, SA.  Do you really think that a Woman raised by Lutherans would be “unemployed”? She has 157 published works.  She comes to stay a few days in my home and unobtrusively finishes yet another work.  She is continually looking out for her family, from all generations.  She is often by the side of her aging adoptive mother.  To say she is unemployed is plainly wrong.

Ali Cobby Eckermann contributes more to our society than most people in the conventional workforce.  She is like most other artists, she enriches our society, helps us see ourselves for what we are, provides perspectives on our being that are normally unrecognised.

Ali, along with pcbycp’s major poets Lionel Fogarty and Ira Maine, are true national treasures.

Not content with winning the NSW Premier’s ward for poetry in 2013, Ali Cobby Eckemann went on to take out the NSW Premiers award for Book of the Year, in the same year. These were not the first awards Ali has won – look at this site to get an idea of the range of both her work and her awards.  No, not content with those she goes on to win the extraordinary Wyndham Campbell prize for poetry.

For more on Ali see this site:  http://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/A96913