An award of this magnitude will continue the healing for many of us.

March 2, 2017 10:03 AM

Now unemployed and living in a caravan in Adelaide, the Indigenous Australian poet Ali Cobby Eckermann says she “pretty much just cried a lot” when she received an email on Thursday notifying her that she had won a literary prize of US$165,000 (A$215,000).

Eckermann's grandmother fled the Maralinga atomic bomb tests, inspiring Eckermann's poem Thunder raining poison. She and her mother were both Stolen Children.

The Windham-Campbell Prize is six years old and only started awarding poets this year.

posted by Etrigan (5 comments total)

Take a look at this group of winners. Beautiful.
posted by praemunire at 10:06 AM on March 2, 2017 [4 favorites]

CW: Comment contains names of dead persons

Ali Cobby Eckermann, previously.
Stolen Generations previouslies: The Children Came Back, Ruby Hunter, A Long walk for justice, Rabbit Proof Fence, Umm, sorry about the genocide
posted by zamboni at 10:16 AM on March 2, 2017 [3 favorites]

That poem "thunder raining poison" is incredibly evocative, thanks for introducing me to her work.
posted by larthegreat at 10:25 AM on March 2, 2017 [1 favorite]

I want Jordan Peele to make a Black Deaths In Custody film nowww.
posted by Etrigan at 10:28 AM on March 2, 2017 [1 favorite]

Related -- Tarnanthi Festival: How a bomb blast inspired glass artist Yhonnie Scarce (The Sydney Morning Herald, Aug. 25, 2015)

Some photos of the instillation.
posted by filthy light thief at 10:30 AM on March 2, 2017