Spoken Word: The Grief of Belonging

“When we return to our belonging to the earth, we return to our responsibility to her. In belonging there is reciprocity and a deep feeling of care.”

Grief brings us home, this Spoken Word evening is a journey exploring belonging to the land and grieving the loss and devastation of human impact. It’s come form seven years of sitting with First Nations elders of this country, of hearing and feeling the impacts of colonisation. It’s come from feeling country and seeing more and more clearly our daily impacts.

These poems have also come from ancestral memory of a life lived in harmony with the lores of nature, the cellular memory of being Indigenous to country in deep belonging and reciprocity. That life now thousands of years in the past. In grieving we can empty ourselves out, unravel from the colonial imprint of conquering and separation and come back to the…