Iona Winter

Tag: healing

  • Speaking to suicide bereavement – A Counter of Moons at Lifting the Lid Festival (audio)

    Heartfelt thanks and my deepest respect to the 2025 Lifting the Lid Festival last weekend. Thank you for providing such a generous and inclusive space to discuss all things death and dying. Thanks to Dr Annetta Mallon for having a fearless conversation with me, about suicide bereavement and my creative…

  • Earth Heart (poem & audio)

    This weekend, I worked on a few new things, revising the plethora of work-in-progress; like scouring the bones of a building after a fire. It was a surprise that the words for ‘Earth Heart’ came to me like a download – I love it when that happens. ‘Earth Heart’ reminds…

  • The dichotomies of grief

    This year’s theme for World Suicide Prevention Day was “changing the narrative around suicide”. How can we do this, when there’s no way to sugarcoat suicide bereavement? It’s not a thing you survive; this kind of grief accompanies you for life. I’ve attempted to challenge “the narrative around suicide” by…

  • thorns

    below  she is a crack in the ocean floor vapours billow forth, surfacing above she is a primordial rose magnificent thorns poised to puncture outside she is a stain from the cat-caught-bird whose enduring feathers survive inside her water-blood-molecules-life shelter a temple of moon-babies and secrets

  • vital

    infinite time to reflect on vital things sentient and alive as the sun carves beneath my skin and mandarin segments linger on my tongue, to the tune of childhood lunch-boxes i am like a blackbird lingering at an empty water trough with the promise of being satiated, desire imprinted upon…

  • wairoro

    wairoro brain eggshell taonga how often were you shaken? i lost count at ten now you halt me completely an uneasy witness to a pared back life of overflowing shoeboxes screaming ‘more odds than ends’ with fragility poised on silken threads of broken-up highways that reside in my head  

  • resonate

    your gaze references inherant mirrors and sonorous caverns of forgotten lovers faint echoes engraved in the bedrock   your words glide willingly subcutaneous breath resonates off damp walls and i recognise sanctuary lies within  

  • quiet

      i am  rinsed clean by the currents deep-blue-green-water-clarity tethered far below like a buoy the weight soon slips quiet from my shoulders i wait back against the clay face outwards to the wind rinsed clean

  • reminder

    i’d forgotten there could be security in a single bed tucked up, flannel sheets, hot-water-bottle-sweaty-warmth seeping through me sometimes we don’t realise how far we’ve come until a friend reminds us that we are safe these days tucked up in a single bed for the night

  • Sea Blossoms

    I love how the wind swirls blossoms around the footpath.   It reminds me of your hair and kelp in the ocean, dragged by the currents.   I imagine myself swimming below your wiry frame star-fished in the water.   Broken pieces of ourselves suspended in the rhythmic caress of…