Re-membering oceans, bodies, rhythms and breath: a collective reflection on life/work as we walk-write from different shorelines

ABSTRACT

This paper is a collaborative reflection by four academic women using our creative writings about oceans and shorelines to think and reflect. We write from discrete locations along the Southern and Eastern coastlines of the invaded continent contemporarily known as Australia. Our methodology incorporates walking and creative writing. This walking-writing methodology has connected us to entangled feelings and lived experiences, including our embodied relationships with the ocean, our work in academia, and our rising levels of anxiety as climate change and related environmental crises coincide with our re-membering of oceans, bodies, rhythms and breath. To illustrate our re-membering, we intersperse fragments from our creative writing with reflective discussion. The social, environmental and political chaos surrounding us seeps into our processes, highlighting how neoliberal ideologies influence our inability to dis/connect, harming both human and beyond-human life. Through walking-writing, we seek to remember what we are losing and to imagine alternative futures.

KEYWORDS:

• Collective writing
• collaborative research
• creative-critical research
• climate change
• activism through the arts

Acknowledgment of country

As non-indigenous residents on stolen country, the authors recognise the Traditional Owners of the lands on which we live and write: the Kaurna people, the Gubbi Gubbi people, the Dja Dja Wurrung and the Taungurung Peoples of the Kulin Nation, the Gunaikurnai people, the Monero (Ngarigo) people, and the Bidawel people. The authors extend respect to Aboriginal Elders, past and present, and to First Nations people everywhere. Sovereignty was never ceded. This always was, always will be, Aboriginal land.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Amelia Walker

Dr Amelia Walker is a poet and independent researcher currently employed on a teaching-only contract at the University of South Australia. She co-edits the reviews section for TEXT, the journal of the Australasian Association of Writing Programs.

Debra Wain

Dr Debra Wain has a PhD in Creative Writing. She writes short fiction about women, food and culture. Deb typically works in sessional teaching-only positions and is currently an independent scholar and a current AAWP executive committee member.

Ali Black

Dr Ali Black uses autoethnography and narrative to listen to and understand wider cultural experiences. Ali's research recognises the importance of contemplating, responding to, validating and acknowledging lived lives.

Elena Spasovska

Dr Elena Spasovska is a researcher and educator interested in conflict transformation, sustainable peace and gender justice; feminist and women's activism against nationalism, populism, militarism and patriarchy; and the political participation of women from diverse backgrounds.