ALL THAT REMAINS: Coffin Collage & Black Out Poetry

Collage and blackout poetry on the surface of a life-sized bio-board coffin. 

This workshop invites an immersive exploration of personal and collective relationships with death and grief.

The coffin becomes both canvas and container. 
This tactile and explorative experience invites you to merge your head, heart and hands. 

ALL THAT REMAINS is a one day workshop of coffin collage and black out poetry. A real coffin becomes our canvas as we reflect on and explore life, death and beyond.Bring your unasked questions, your chosen funeral song, a eulogy you’ve written and care to share. Bring a copy of your favourite poem, your brain and intuition and together let’s reimagine what is possible when we are met with the ultimate maker.

Join us amongst images and words, memories, markers and imaginings centred around death, dying and grieving. Through cutting, arranging, redacting, and reimagining, we’ll give form to what often goes unspoken—making space for memory, meaning, grief, fear, beauty, and even humour.

You are welcome as long as you’re over 18 after that, the rules are, all ages. A good room is an intergenerational room.You don’t have to be arty, or a wordsmith or even good at cutting out pictures. You do need to be willing to wholeheartedly listen to each other.

Anticipate irreverence and seriousness, laughs and a tear, anything goes; just like we do, eventually.

// What might it mean to turn towards each other in dying and in grieving
// What does ‘ritual’ really mean? What shapes could they take
// What happens when you die
// What poetry or symbols best represent you or someone you love
// What alternative ways might we honour the people we love through life, death and beyond.
// What song will be played at your funeral, bring it! We’ll play it

Coffin collage invites you to consider your relationship with loss, how we ritualise, vigil, be with each other during the last stage. How do we honour and tend our loved ones through death and beyond.

This day is for you if you are seeking a creative day out, embodied personal inquiry, catharsis, death awareness or professional development. 

Please note:
All materials are supplied, and you are also invited to bring whatever holds meaning to you.
No artistic experience necessary, just your willingness to show up with curiosity and care.
Therapists and clinicians may request a certificate of attendance for PD hours.

Benjo and Emma very much look forward to your company. 

Contribute to a re/generative culture of community deathcare.

Your Facilitators:

Benjo Kazue [He/Him] - Website link
Benjo Kazue is interdisciplinary artist from the dregs of gonzo rock n' roll. He fuses creative non fiction, new journalism, autobiographical fiction and armchair philosophy with cut and paste collage into tactile works of contemporary beatnik reportage with a potent combination of sensorial force, vivid language, existential meandering, nihilistic humour and gonzo poetry. 

Benjo's creative non fiction, journalism, music criticism and commentary have been published in street press, national media, literary journals and websites over the world including Bengaluru Review, Joao Roque Literary Journal, Collapse Board, NME and Monster Children, leading renowned rock critic Everett True to claim he could be Lester Bangs incarnate. Benjo is currently the editor and genius at the helm of DIY literary journal and indie publishing house 'Cosmic Phallusy', which was shortlisted for Best Overall Zine and Best Lit Zine at the 2022 Broken Pencil International Zine awards.

Emma Beattie [she/her] - Before & After Life
Emma has worked and volunteered across the terrain of caring, dying and grieving since 2020.  She brings an animistic, post humanist, creative and poetic lens to caring, deathing and grieving. Her work, training and studies intersect a long line of lived experienced with personal loss and from this place she offers practical supports, education and facilitation for people, families, and groups; term courses, workshops, community meets and retreats. 

Emma works and collaborates with Paperbark Deathcare, she is a member of Palliative Care NSW, National Loss & Grief Association (NALAG), the Natural Death Advocacy Network (NDAN), is an advocate for Compassionate Communities Australia and appears on BayFM 99.9 as a regular guest on The Byron Beat.