Charmaine Papertalk-Green – April 5 2020

Charmaine was born at Eradu railway siding (between Geraldton and Mullewa) on Amangu country and is a member of the Wajarri and Badimaya cultural groups from the Yamaji Nation of Western Australia. She began writing poetry in the late 1970s under the name Charmaine Papertalk-Green (her father’s and mother’s surnames respectively) and goes by the name Charmaine Joy Green for her visual arts and installation work. Published as a teenager, her poems have appeared in anthologies of Indigenous Australian poetry including Inside Black Australia: An Anthology of Aboriginal Poetry edited by Kevin Gilbert. Hard-hitting and intense, as well as compassionate and empowering, her poetry confronts such issues as the legacy and heritage of drugs and alcohol and violence with empathy and directness. Charmaine was instrumental in the incubation of the arts and cultural project touring exhibition ‘Ilgarijiri – Things belonging to the Sky’, a Yamaji Art collaboration with the Curtin Institute of Radio Astronomy Curtin University, Square Kilometer Array (SKA) project Australian Government and City of Greater Geraldton. She is currently a researcher and educator at the Combined Universities Centre for Rural Health in Geraldton.

Tiptoeing Tracker Tod [Verse novel]
Oxford University Press, 2014; ISBN 9780195524413
8-10 years

Tod wants to be the greatest little tracker in the city. He solves a case using only his eyes and a sprinkle of flour. He finds his way home with just his mobile for directions. Then Unc Bullfrog, the master tracker of all Yamaji trackers, comes to visit! City kids can learn bush things, bush kids like to learn city things … This verse novel is part of the Yarning Strong Series, Land Module.

Just Like That and Other Poems
Fremantle Press, 2007; ISBN 9781921064128
15+ years

Charmaine Papertalk-Green’s poetry is intense and direct. She says what she means and is willing to take on issues that affect her community from outside and from within. She writes of Indigenous loss, but also about tensions and conflicts among her own people. For Papertalk-Green, culture isn’t in the past, it’s all around in the here and now….