*Working in the spirit of collage with amazing artist Louise Upshall to create works using the planning notes collaboratively written each week by Gareth Thomas, Sarah Daniel, and I. Using a process of random word and phrase selection, I have constructed this poem from the week one planning notes co-created with Gareth Thomas and Sarah Daniel for our ‘Listening to the Land: Poetic Action Against the Raising of the Warragamba Dam Wall” workshops.
The energy in this work is hot and brilliant with sacred fires, and I choose words as my magic in stoking those flames. This will be a process that I do for each of the five weeks to ensure that the spirit of love being poured into this work and out into the living land is expressed. I acknowledge this as co-created work in recognition of the connective energy that flows between us in planning, participating with, and collaboratively facilitating each weeks workshop. These are all of our words and imaginings, working big magic together in service of our beautiful Earth.
Acknowledgement of introductions
My name is… the value of meeting
Starting with a reminder
That today I am like…
The right to speak into
Our shared value.
Process of allies
Perfectly non-human
Appear in preparation for
Being available to
Quick words that invite
Getting to know,
To speak their piece and peace,
Moving on into
Being surprised.
Burragorang and Warragamba
Participate, put forward
An unsettling quiet…
What does it mean??
Sit with it longer
Awareness changes into
Skin and senses –
Burragorang wanted to share
Something amazing that happens
As stillness begins to speak
Into your water as river.
Warragamba encourages
Visits of deep listening into
A basket of collective place
Where powerful voices of
Earth-kin profoundly shape
Ecological worlds and poetry
Through inspiration.
Creative visualisation to
Travel into the imagination
Of shared places Who are
Able to influence
Our living animal bodies,
Recall scenes of connection
To engage with this world,
One of our own
And also shared.
Really connecting is
Openness to silence,
Surrender of the human voice
To the ways that Earth-kin
Inspire and speak through us.
Remember: we are not
Non-communicative
With their lives
If we simply offer the
Deep listening of their ways.
Everyone will be able
To see what works
When done in the spirit of
Human as ally
Letting Earth-kin move you.
Never speaking FOR
Only WITH and AS a
More than just human world
Capable of speaking
For themselves, to ourselves –
Animal bodies that scribe
The TO and WITH
And TROUBLE and TOGETHER.
Begin to connect through
An offer to pop out
Imagined futures listening
While people draw together
Collage stories of
Celebrating rather than fighting,
Risk of loss more real
When agonising with
Celebratory activism.
What will their homes
Look like in fifty years?
Invite different themes of
Mix and match expressions
Into nurturing love
And the Spirit of place
We prefer to choose
Together.
Little Bat 