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
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