I am Corrie Hosking, Adelaide-Hills-Australian, raised round Stringybark forest—meeting lands of Kaurna and Peramangk people. Now growing my four children, scrabbling at life-off-land, against considerable odds. Tending animals, trees, vegetables. Aiming to publish more books. Working as a Child Therapist, supporting children with disability/difficulty, due to often unthinkable abuse. In this work, once safety is established, we start with the body, calm its responses—its fire / flee / freeze. Still the body, inhabit it fully, to tell the story. Wearied, worried, worn and quite literally running from this work, I picked up paint. Watercolour bleeding—can focus on flowers dissipate agitation, steady wavering? Sketching feathers in ink, with illusions of air, I returned to writing. Departing from memoir, developing fiction. Picking at cultural tangles: Fe/male Body/Mind /Health/Illness… Gender/Mothering/Sexuality/Dis/Ability… Captivated by: Story—how it is written/lived…including on/in The Body, (how inner workings of mind sway with sensory, endocrine systems, slacken and swerve with bodily rush… the ways we embody culture, internalise constrictions…) Power, its operations (overt/covert) The restorative, revolutionary potential of Art-Making. Sharing song, dance, ritual, picture, paint, story we connect, repair/recover/replenish, grow sense of who we are, what matters. My involvement at Luminous Bodies attempts to reconcile my tenuous connection to arts practice, attempting to put language to the intimate and often unarticulated daily tremors of the body. Dismantling the familiar dichotomy—the mind/body rupture—I allude that a return to art—ironically, to something as cerebral as writing—can bring us back to ourselves, return us to our bodies.

Luminous Bodieswill evolve my third work of literary fiction. Writing tracks the un/ravelling of a woman’s life, testing the edges of memoir, essay, interview, the possibilities of illustration. Writing delves the embodied way we assume culture, the intractable, ongoing spinning of self, identity, our innate drive—visceral need—to communicate experience, creatively. Examining the Western preoccupation with self-realisation, unwavering wellness, aims to bare ways pursuing such goals can keep us forever searching, preoccupied—ill. Purpose is not to proffer advice, nor literary resolution. Motivation is to add depth to a dialogue too often constrained by gender, medical models, too pared by popular media. Irradiated is the quietening, transformative potential of making Art, the reconsideration of being a human/animal, responding to the world. This projectgrows from my diverse experience within the Arts and Health worlds—significantly, by my work as a trauma-informed child therapist and key assumptions around the physiological responses of human distress. As a writer, this challenge of representing bodily experience is captivating. Participation at Luminous BodiesI anticipate new insights into the profound impact of Arts practice and processes on the breadth of our meaning-making, our well-being.

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Corrie Hosking has completed study within Arts, Social Work and Education, culminating in PhD Creative Writing/Cultural Studies. She has various awards writing for theatre and Literature (including Sydney Morning Herald’s Best Young Australian Writer 2005), published in anthologies, novels Ash Rain(Wakefield Press 2004) and Eating Lolly(HarperCollins 2008), been a writer mentor, speaker at Writers’ Festivals, Writer in Residence for people with disabilities. Currently she works in Early Childhood Intervention, predominantly as a trauma-informed Child Therapist. She endeavours to balance this with her 4 children on 26 acres in South Australia. She is scrabbling to get back to writing. Hoskins thanks thanks the South Australian Government: Arts SA for support to participate in the residency.