Norm Newlin – February 28 2021

Norm is a storyteller, poet, academic, war veteran, Justice of the Peace and Worimi Aboriginal Elder. His life story appears in My Father My Brother: Stories of Campbelltown’s Aboriginal Men. Having left school at the age of 14, Norm now holds a Bachelor of Communications (Honours) from the University of Technology (Sydney) and an Associate Diploma in Adult Education. He has been Aboriginal Writer in Residence at Charles Sturt University and is now an Elder on Campus at Western Sydney University. Norm has sat on a number of boards including the NSW/ACT Aboriginal Legal Service and the Campbelltown City Council Aboriginal Advisory Committee. He was a founding member of UTS’s Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning together with Ken Canning and Franny Peters-Little, and was a contributing writer to UWS Professor Rhonda Craven’s Teaching Aboriginal Studies: A Practical Resource for Primary and Secondary Teaching. Born in 1934, at a time when the Aboriginal Welfare Board controlled Aboriginals’ lives and money, Norm’s first poem, Sanctimonious Bastard, was about things that happened to his mother. He describes his second poem, Sweet Water, as a breakthrough which allowed him to turn his anger into a redeeming process through writing. He now writes poetry inspired by love. Norm’s poems have appeared in Refrain: Poetry Review (Supplement to Australian Book Review), Southern Review, The Geography of Memory and The Thirteenth Floor (Volume XIV in the UTS Writers Anthology series). He has appeared at numerous festivals, including the Sydney Writers Festival, and has been committed to regularly visiting and working with inmates at Long Bay Gaol. Norm’s other work includes Where There’s Life There’s Spirit, illustrated by Darren Kemp, written in 1988 making it the first Worimi published work of prose.

My Worimi Lovesong Dreaming: The Love Poems of Norm Newlin
Self-published, 1996; ISBN 9780646304885
Dedication: To the women who shared the sunsets and sunrises, held me when I needed understanding, broke my heart and gave me all they had to give. Some of you may have fond memories. Others still taste the bitter herbs of life. I ask for your forgiveness and thank you for all your gentleness, beautiful thoughts and the most wonderful gift of all.
Poems include ‘Dream’, ‘Star Light’, ‘Healing Waters’, ‘Energies’, ‘Lady T’, ‘A Song of You’, ‘Exploring Our Secrets’, ‘Eternal Life’, and ‘My Song of You’.

All Ginibi’s Mob: Our Voices Collected by Ruby Langford Ginibi
Ginninderra Press in association with the Riawunna Centre at the University of Tasmania, 2011; ISBN 9781740276856
This is Ruby’s collection of 134 poems by 23 of her family and friends. There are poems of love, hate, anger, dreaming, land, culture, animals, philosophy, respect, missionaries, colonisers, survival, politics, caring, life, death, and hope. Norm’s contributions include ‘Mother Tongue’, ‘Tell Me Why’, ‘His Mother’s Arms’, ‘Born of the Land’, ‘The Buddah Tree’ and ‘Acceptance is Strength’.