Introduction and Contents In Honour of the Birdwoman in us all, 1997 [1] Where is she now, this Birdwoman? She is here. In every woman who has dared to be different dared to risk dared to stand alone. In women who have dared to question ask ‘why?’ In women who have dared to dream dared to fly too high. In those women who have fallen been broken burned And in those whose gentle spirits could not survive the realities of this world. She is here. [1] Performed in Fallen Totems, 1997. Installation and masks, Irene Kindness.
Most of these reflections were written 1994-2000; others are more recent. Many of them became texts for performances. They, and the performances, were part of a process of coming to terms with and developing a philosophy of life. One of the stages in this process was my doctoral thesis, Centre of the Storm: In Search of an Australian Feminist Spirituality through Performance-Ritual. The performance element of the thesis traced ancestral pathways and stories from north-western Europe to Australia, and the process formulated my own religious paradigm, that is, a spiritual ground and matrix, which encapsulated an increasing awareness of place. I view the poems and reflection as expressing my ‘growing up’; of attaining peace; of being able to celebrate the journey of life with full knowledge of the messy and confronting realities of our own lives and those of our co-travellers. The content here comprise only a selection of the poems and reflections wr...
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