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.