Love poems and other revolutionary actions

by Roberta B. Sykes

Genres: Poetry, Fiction

57 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

Roberta "Bobbi" Sykes (b. 1943) is an Australian poet and author. Although she is the daughter of a white Australian mother and an African-American father, she has always identified as, and until recently was accepted as, an indigenous Australian. She has been a life-long campaigner for indigenous land rights, as well as human rights and women's rights.Awards and nominations

1982: Patricia Weickert Black Writers Award
1994: Australian Human Rights Medal
1997: Age Book of the Year for Snake Cradle
1998: National Biography Award for Snake Cradle
1998: Nita B. Kibble Literary Award for Snake Cradle

Bibliography

Love Poems and other Revolutionary Actions (Cammeray: The Saturday Centre, 1979)
Mum Shirl: An Autobiography (with Colleen Shirley Perry) (Melbourne, 1981)
Love Poems and other Revolutionary Actions (St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1989) ISBN 0-7022-2173-2
Eclipse. (Queensland, Australia: Univ of Queensland Press, 1996) ISBN 0-7022-2848-6
Incentive, Achievement and Community (Sydney: Sydney University Press, 1986)
Black Majority (Hawthorn, Australia: Hudson, 1989) ISBN 0-949873-25-X
Murawina: Australian Women of High Achievement (Sydney: Doubleday, 1993) ISBN 0-86824-436-8
Snake Cradle (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1997) ISBN 1-86448-513-2
Snake Dancing (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1998) ISBN 1-86448-513-2
Snake Circle (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2000) ISBN 1-86508-335-6

External links

http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/cms/china... for an analysis of the controversy about her identity.

Reviews

[Yasmine Flodin-Ali · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely gorgeous.

[Alexandra Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

Currently harassing the heads of department and course coordinators I work with to get this into the curriculum

[Lesieli · Rating 5 out of 5]

A soul articulate.

[Heidi · Rating 3 out of 5]

More Indigenous poetry - and by a poet who I first read, many years ago, as a memoirist. (If you haven't read Sykes' three-volume autobiography - Snake Cradle, Snake Dancing and Snake circle - it's a definite recommend from me: in fact it would probably go on my 101 list.)

As I was reading the book, I jotted down some notes on particular poems.

'Rachel' - I've read it twice or three times now, as it's commonly anthologised. It hits hard and hurts: Palm Island, scene of Tall Man: The Death of Doomadgee, and then there are the lines "named from the Bible//that good and holy book//which came into this country along with Captain Cook."

Rachel didn't have a chance - and as Pat O'Shane says in the Foreword, there are so many more black Rachels than white Rachels.

'Fallen' brings back the guilt. The horror and paralysis of being unable to do anything - the brain-deadening fog of 'my people, but not me'; and I've fogotten what I once learnt for dealing with it all.

I love 'Cycle', although it cars me as well. It's somehow gently militant - oxymoronic if anything ever is.

Another favourite is 'A poem for poets'. I copied that one into my journal.

Reactions to poetry are so very personal. Like most of the Indigenous Australian poetry I've read, this collection rips out my heart and stamps on it. But I find I can still deal much better with the heart-ripping if it's done by women rather than by men. (A reason for women to have a significant voice in these things - people like me.)