In June 2020, Enough! hosted Stories for Terrestrial Survival, a creative writing workshop led by poet and translator Juana Adcock. The workshop was held to honour Degrowth Day.
Here we share some of the writing produced during the workshop.
Before the Trauma
by Justin Kenrick
1
Before the trauma
was the tiny palm
searching for love,
embodying love.
In the beginning
was connection
and emergence:
knowing nothing,
embodying everything.
2.
The trauma
of the ‘you not me,
me not you’ world
was nowhere
in the ‘me because you,
you because me’ world.
3.
Does outing the trauma
drive it deeper?
Or open us
to healing whole?
What makes for fearing to speak?
What makes for fearing to feel?
What makes for “I’m right, You’re wrong”?
What makes for “I’m wrong, You’re wrong”?
4.
Must we be thrown
scraps of silence,
or eat our words?
5.
Trauma sits by the fire in its cave,
terrified of the huge shadows it casts,
thinking fear and terror are the only company.
“Safe here” it thinks,
where none can hurt
because there is no one
and nothing but hurt.
6.
Step out into the big field of unknowing
where we can touch our sadness.
It is bitter out here
where violence tears the world by the throat.
It is sweet out here
where kindness searches out kindness, keening in song,
searching for he how of honesty and love,
we stumble across each other’s hopes and fears
asking for forgiveness,
offering gratitude,
making mistakes,
getting cross.
7.
There is nowhere else to go,
no one else to love
in syllables of fury
or words of care.
Here by the hearth of
roaring flame, subdued embers, bitter ash
we are the earth hurting, hearting, healing.
Stretched taught
by the pain
of being
divided from each other,
and being one.