Tossed Up By the Beak of a Cormorant: Poems of the Martuwarra Fitzroy

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 National Heritage Listed (2011) and Western Australia’s largest registered Aboriginal cultural heritage site and, for some, it 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.

Nandi Chinna is a writer and environmental activist. Nandi has written a PhD on walking and the lost wetlands of Perth.