Yilkari: A desert suite
Nicolas Rothwell and Alison Nampitjinpa Anderson
Text Publishing
In a note to readers at the start of this book, Yilkari: A desert suite is described as ‘the product of two minds.’ Those minds being writer and arts journalist, Nicolas Rothwell and his partner, former NT politician and acclaimed artist, Alison Nampitjinpa Anderson, a Luritja-Pintupi woman from the Western Desert community of Papunya.
The novel is certainly a collaboration between the two, with the recognisable elegant prose of Rothwell providing the compelling narrative while Anderson provides the cultural context for the book’s magical journey of exploration of Country, memory and culture.
Yilkari is a collection of four short, dialogue-driven sections, featuring a first-person narrator journeying into the desert with different companions.
Reviewers have described Yilkari as resisting ‘easy categorisation’. It is not propelled by a conventional novelist’s plot but rather by a series of conversations amidst desert country road trips.
A dialogue-dense novel Yilkari may prove to be a difficult read for some, but perseverance will be rewarded by a literary adventure where culture, memory, and land combine.
Through Rothwell’s beautiful prose and Anderson’s deep understanding of desert Country and culture, Yilkari gives the reader a critical insight into First Nations peoples’ view of the land as a living being, and the intricate depths of connection through millennia of caring for Country.
A Savage Turn
Luke Patterson
Magabala Books
A Savage Turn is the debut collection from Gamilaroi poet Luke Patterson. When speaking to ABC’s Awaye! program, Patterson said he is obsessed with poetry and sees and hears the world in verse. Patterson’s deep love for poetry and prose, accompanied by his sharp wit and observations, is evident across the collection of works as he delves into the realms of continued culture among ongoing colonisation.
A Savage Turn is broken into three parts: Smutty Paperbark & Other Creation Stories, A Savage Turn & Other Love Songs, and The Other Side of Country. All three parts explore the dichotomy of modern and traditional life and culture alongside love and connection to Country.
In the poem Australia: A Creation Myth, Patterson gives a palpable description of first contact as the swallowing and digestion of the land by ‘a well-oiled machine called colony’. However, the poem also illustrates that the ingestion of the land and its waterways could never fully erase First Nations peoples and culture: ‘It swallowed earth’s custodians, exquisite, ingenious savage, always savage but could not consume them.’
As Patterson says himself, he spends his life trying to describe a complex world where language bends meaning, and this stunning and defiant presentation of poetry is exactly that – and is not one to be missed.
First Knowledges: Ceremony
Luke Patterson
Magabala Books
Somewhere between essay and memoir, Ceremony, the ninth book in the First Knowledges series, unfolds as a conversation between Quandamooka theatre director and writer Wesley Enoch, and non-Indigenous anthropologist Georgia Curran. Their differing backgrounds are evident in the text but are complementary; Enoch’s writing is passionate and poetic, Curran’s more academic but warm and easy to read, and both write in the fashion of people intimately familiar with their subject. The pairing keeps the experience fresh and allows us to examine ceremony as an anthropological pursuit and experience it as a spiritual one.
Editor Margo Ngawa Neale has compiled all nine volumes in the First Knowledges series. Neale is an historian, so naturally there is an emphasis on traditional ceremonies, but the writers also examine events unique to modern Australia as ceremonies in equal measure, like Australia Day – a thought-provoking exercise, particularly in this context.
This is not a detached examination, but a moving invitation to witness how ceremony continues to shape lives and landscapes, perfectly encapsulated in the line, ‘ceremonies are a way of connecting all our yesterdays to today’. Ceremony stands as a profound addition to the series; a reflection on who we have been, who we are and how, through ceremony, we continue to become.
Going for Pippies
Wilaaran Hunter Laurie, illustrated by Tori-Jay Mordey
Magabala Books
Dive into a seaside adventure wrapped in cultural celebration in Going for Pippies. Young Wilaaran joins his extended family on Country, squishing toes in sand, doing the ‘pippie dance’, and learning the age-old traditions of his Yaegl community as they search for the little shellfish that’ll become dinner.
Laurie’s text is warm, rhythmic, and works perfectly alongside Mordey’s illustrations that seem to light up each page; expressive faces, colour-rich beach scenes and a real sense of joy in the journey, from muddy toes to proud catch.
Going for Pippies blends fun family moments with deeper themes of intergenerational learning, cultural connection, and respect for land and sea. It’s joyfully educational and a gentle prompt for kids to consider what their family traditions are and what they mean to them.
In short: an uplifting, visually beautiful picture book that invites children into living a day of gathering, sharing and belonging. Highly recommended for young readers and families alike.
This article is from the 54th edition of Reconciliation News. Read the rest of the issue.
