gypsyheart

BOOK LAUNCH - 'Nature - a gift' - by Bee Williamson

BOOK LAUNCH        
‘Nature - a gift’

by Bee Williamson

Bee Williamson launches her second book of poetry & artwork as Pheast48’s first café-poet-in-residence through Australian Poetry Ltd.
Bee is the granddaughter of well known nature writer, Henry Williamson, of ‘Tarka’ fame. Her book is a limited edition fine art book with the addition of 31 poems.

Welcome to a lazy Sunday afternoon of readings and music with tapas and wine for purchase, or try Luisa’s tempting cakes and great coffee.

MC Nilgun Guven, acoustic guitar by Harry Williamson, and readers, Lola, jeltje and Bee.

11th December  2011
3 - 5pm
at Pheast48 Cafe
near Kooyong Road
48 Wattletree Road, 

Armadale (VIC)

Tsunami

And so my people

My many people

Before me

Echoing every breath

Echoing every sigh

Have walked the

shore before me

 

But my people

did not see today

today they did not see

The ocean

Rise up ten stories

And crash

With black magnitude

Upon every easterly  foreshore town

 

At every moment

Her eyes flashed

Around to see the

Welling of cars, soil, sand,

Boats, houses and rubble

Death’s debri

 

Contained in a wave

Soundless in it’s history

Never seen

Before or since

 

Struck by news

I sit bewildered

And in tears for moments

Stretching to days

of disaster

As the images pour forth

 

Tokyo

I have always had an affinity

With Japan

And it’s ancient artistic proud culture

Dreams of the cherry-blossom festival

Have always tugged my heart

 

But to see her island

Smashed apart

Green houses look like pipe cleaners

Toy cars soaking in a huge bath

Alongside red toy planes

 

I am looking to the

Horizon as the sea

Washes towards me faster and faster

It is sensing its victory

Harnessing its strength

Against us

 

I see the water

Rush up to me and I hear cries like

Gulls in the distance

 

I did not survive and

my village is destroyed

 

in her counterpart

I have visions

But as her innocence

Is pulled from her heart

Like a butoh white bandage

Only sand will be           

Her grave

 

Nature - a gift

a little rant about my third collection of poems and artwork.

 

The book is about the gift – our birthright. The gift is both a spiritual truth and a mystery.

 

 Nature is that gift. In the same way our bodies are a gift from Great Spirit/God. Nature is degraded, by some, and seen as just a resource to be emptied, used and exploited. I feel that the true interconnectedness of ourselves and nature is not nutured enough. David Suzuki’s message is the same. To honour, love and protect the nature. Our farmers know we need to honour our earth, relish her as vital. To exploit our earth as something that is just “a thing”, an “object” to get the most out of, to be extracted and carved up, is some thing that most native cultures see as a bizarre and strange attitude. American Indian and Indigenous Australian know we don’t own the land, we belong to her. We behave as if we are alienated from our own land, our one planet that supports life itself.  We reap what we sow, and the seeds we are planting now are alienation and estrangement from that which gives us life, our very life. We are born ‘in’ to humanity’s family as well as being born ‘in’ to life on earth, nature.

 

I believe that some of us, who are hard at work, need to know that some things we all do are just “the mindless acquiring of wealth” as my grandfathers said to me. To seek only to acquire money for no real purpose other than to have more, leves our earth in the hands of some who may not benefit all our collective interests in the long run. While our backs are turned what happens to mother nature? As a culture we can sometimes be blind to the consequences of our actions and choices. Long term health for humanity is bound so so close, inextricable close to the health of our natural world. Does every choice count when our food is packaged in so much plastic? Does it?

 

I believe we need to be reminded of these things and so I wrote this book. My grandfather was an famous English nature writer, and it was his spirit that came to me in April last year, when I was at a loss of what to do with these feelings and needed a project to get my teeth into. His spirit came to me and said, “Why don’t you write a book of nature poems and illustrate them?”. From that moment I was inspired and motivated. I began by enrolling in Botanical Illustration classes at the Royal Botanical Gardens, Melbourne.

love, bee williamson

Darkest Regrets

Darkest Regrets

 

I walked the streets, cold and alone

As one does, with no hope or friends or money

I walked the streets, almost, to abase myself

To the darkest fears and the darkest regrets

Of never having

loved

myself

In a gilded language

I tore myself to bits

 

I stepped of the street

Into a house in Carlton that’s lino loved no-one

I tried to sooth myself from shy tears

I believed in love, and in loving myself

Yet in a gilded ignorance

I was trapped in self-loathing’s black mirror

 

Caught in a mesmerizing life

of traffic and Turkish coffee readings with poached eggs at 3 in the afternoon

Yet  when I found no relief in my imagination

No reprieve in talking books accompanied with sewing patchwork

or in student-ish poetry

 

I found solace in others words

The Tibetan Book of the Living and Dying

Concepts that become just simple words

telling me what ‘they’ thought

What other people felt

How life could be bland, could be unexpectedly disappointing

How a gilded mask could hide the truth of life’s darkest regrets

 

When I said ‘no’ to you

You said ‘yes’ to her.

the first of firsts

It's the first of the first for me

wrapped in black wool, possum fur and leather boots...

I am sitting at my cafe poet post

french chairs, rose paintings as big as the walls, all orange and pink...

chandeliers and old masters on the ceiling

the thing of beauty that changes everything?

the light

as it ebbs and flows through the cafe window this early morning

it catches the thick candelabra and the old regal wooden chairs that

sit face to face, mind to mind, heart to heart with french stripped cusions

the thing of being human that changes everything?

is the heart

I cannot imagine me as only a mind...

last night I lay, exhausted from a day of work, on my bed of purple mohair warmth

and felt my heart

soft 

warm 

full 

and delicate

that heart that tells me oh so quietly and not everyday

"I love you"

It is that slightly imperceptible resonance in the heart chamber

that tells me I am more than the words of the

rambling mind 

plagued 

full of doubts

questioning

analyzing 

and fear

I am more than consisting of thoughts

although I use thoughts to tell you this

when that heart resonance purrs like an miniature engine

like a sleepy warm cat

curled in a chair

the light

in the heart

is the warmth in my mother's hand

a blessing of

being alive

6.7.2010 written this morning at Pheast48.

Terra Nullius

Terra Nullius

 

Tens of Thousands of Years

 

one country

one land

one people

 

One Hundred Years

 

pioneers

loggers

buildings

cities

rent,

petrol

gas

electricity

cars

goldmines

 

an island

a country

ruined

 

destroyed

raped and left

for dead

 

One Hundred Years

 

rampant consumerism

white is right

the mindless acquiring of wealth

 

Our First World Paradise

 

pesticides

insecticides

oil refineries

coal stations

soil salinity

blue green algae

freeways

housing estates

asylums

institutions

 

hum hum hum

 

the bee’s

turn blue and green,

grow seven wings

eleven eyes

 

mutant honey-makers

 

from fire makers, dream brothers,

family and a sacred land

 

loved with each hand

of each generation

 

Tens of Thousands of Years

 

here, right here

 

One Hundred Years

Only One Hundred Years

 

what have we left you?

WHAT HAVE WE LEFT YOU?

 

plastic bottles

plastic bags

choking the Merri

 

 

trickles

where once was rushing

the Snowy

 

Ancient moonlight, ghost gums

cleared with no thought

no thought

of tomorrows loves                        needs                        wants

 

 

Bee Williamson

25/5/07

wild within wild

wild within wild

I don’t belong
in the
crowded cafe
central station bustle
crammed city streets
shopping centres
peak hour tram rides home.

Give me
the desolate moors 
of Exmoor
the cliffs
and rugged 
Celtic Sea tide

I belong in the 
oceans
of Byron
little Wategoes
where the dolphins swim

I don’t belong
where only humans dwell.
Some part of me
smacks at the concrete artifice
we have made

Give me the lonely bush
of Eildon’s high country
miles upon miles
of ghost gum
sanctuaries

the birds of my city home
they are my friends
they guide me, warn me,
laugh and giggle at me

the neighbour’s big husky
patrols our street
she has the eyes
of her ancestors

I am wary
alive
with her so near
(which is good)

broken-hearted misfit
belongs in the moors of home
where mum wrapped me 
in scarves
in hats
in layers

cheeks whipped with wind
pink & fresh
eyes clear

I was
wild within wild.

therapise me again doctor

 

B&W Tango Photo II - "Sidewalk Tango"

  

On and Off

On and Off

 

It's raining

last night the cafe was dark

you were standing,  I was tired.

What is this fear

it keeps me here writing.

 

Your strange face suddenly appears

in the mask of your unshed tears.

 

We cannot speak

but those eyes

they cry sorrow.

 

I am afraid

the thing that keeps me close also drives me away.

The paradox of attraction.

 

I lose myself in days of fruitless

yet euphoric fantasies.

Erotic and placid, together,

on the bench in my mind,

called love.

 

It grows larger every day

expectation.

Chips flake away from the varnished surface.

I try to spit shine the layers of illusion

simultaneously on and off.