Returning and Re-membering: Reading Kerry Reed-Gilbert’s “Wiradjuri Country”

Abstract

This short-form article presents a brief exploration of Kerry Reed-Gilbert’s “Wiradjuri Country,” highlighting how the poem emphasises a profound connection between the poet-speaker and her ancestral land, where history, memory, and cultural identity overlap. The process of “remembering,” as the poem reminds us, has to necessarily negotiate with the deep trauma, both individual and collective, emerging from the history of colonial oppression inflicted upon the Aboriginal people of Australia. This article follows the speaker on her transformative spiritual journey to reclaim, in the form of “re-membering,” the sacred continuity among the past, the present, and the future that transcends the limits of “History” as the Western Enlightenment framed it.

DOI - https://doi.org/10.65525/SVUP.9788199392021.2025.58-63.