'For the best part of a decade, from the early 1980s to the early 1990s, my family and I were included in the informal list of house guests at Abydos, Dr Val Vallis's rainforest retreat at The Knoll, North Tamborine. Dr Vallis (1916-2009), who preferred to be known as Val, a distinguished poet and Reader in English in what was then the University of Queensland's English Department, had been a friend and mentor to me during my undergraduate years. Val's offer to lend me the key to Abydos was a gift that opened the way to a place of profound natural beauty, inspiration and creativity, and the poems in this Tamborine Mountain collection, Green Dance, are the direct result of that magnanimous gesture.' (Foreword introduction)
Dedication:
In tribute to the Mountain's traditional custodians,
past and present; in memory of Val Vallis;
for my son Romany, and for Janis Bailey
'A sense of anticipation stirs. I sit with a large archive box marked ‘Vallis’ at a wide wooden desk in the University of Queensland’s Fryer Library. Other boxes await. I lift the box’s lid.' (Introduction)
'Some of us are fortunate to have experienced those places where nature awakens us to become its disciple. A pause on a mountain top or a walk in a rain forest compels us to contemplate our humanity. However to write about this experience without undertones of politics nor activism, rather with precise lyric and evocative tone is what Jena Woodhouse has undoubtedly achieved in her most recent poetry collection, Green Dance. Through her lens, she amplifies the micro of our natural world in such a way where you can’t help but cherish, wonder and want to protect what we have left.' (Introduction)
'Some of us are fortunate to have experienced those places where nature awakens us to become its disciple. A pause on a mountain top or a walk in a rain forest compels us to contemplate our humanity. However to write about this experience without undertones of politics nor activism, rather with precise lyric and evocative tone is what Jena Woodhouse has undoubtedly achieved in her most recent poetry collection, Green Dance. Through her lens, she amplifies the micro of our natural world in such a way where you can’t help but cherish, wonder and want to protect what we have left.' (Introduction)
'A sense of anticipation stirs. I sit with a large archive box marked ‘Vallis’ at a wide wooden desk in the University of Queensland’s Fryer Library. Other boxes await. I lift the box’s lid.' (Introduction)
