PUBLICATIONS
In this debut work, Clemence Overall is thrown into a Guatemalan jail where she befriends eleven innocent Mayan women. For weeks, the Mayan women in that cell share their food with her, their watery coffee. They sleep on the floor together. Little by little she hears bits and pieces of their stories, dark stories about why are in jail. There seems to be no hope for their future but somehow, they are resilient. Clémence sets out to understand this resilience. Ignoring the advice of locals, reporters and friends, she goes by boat, rides rusty buses, tramps through jungles to Guatemalan and Haitian villages. She introduces us to Larian, a Haitian mother, soon to become a boat person; in the Guatemala, Mayan indigenous Teresa leads Clemence into coffee fields and copal smoked rooms where traditions knock against racism; and as far away in Washington DC, Jayla, left as a baby on a garbage can, survives foster homes and fights behind prison walls to keep her family intact. From voudou ceremonial huts to the Capital in Washington DC, Clemence’s own life is changed radically as she uncovers the real stories of women’s lives and finds hope for the future.
Down to the Bone is a memoir of adventure and enlightenment with wide appeal to academics, travelers, poets and feminists. The lyricism of Louis Erdrich combines with the hard-core reportage of Amy Wilentz to immerse the reader in the lives of three endangered women. While real life never guarantees freedom or survival, these stories demonstrate the inestimable power of connection, community and shared culture.
Down to the Bone will grab you from the first sentence as you join Clemence on her journey of understanding, empathy, and deep discovery.
— Cheryl Tromley, PhD, Professor Emerita, Fairfield University.
Down to the Bone has so many important and urgent things to say about our society, about the plight of women the world over, about the commonality of suffering, and the indomitability of the human spirit in the face of immense hardship.
— Julie Postance, author of Breaking the Sound Barriers
Fueled by intense curiosity and boundless compassion, this odyssey offers an unvarnished look at women worldwide hobbled by both gender and caste.
— Erica Barker, Project Manager, RMIT
2022
A Landscape that Breathes
self published zine
A collaboration by poet Clémence Overall and painter Mark Wotherspoon.
Foreword /
If you listen, the land around us gently folds secret songs and stories into its depths. The poet and the painter listen. In your hand you hold words and pictures that have been crafted through close observation, through walking, through sitting, through stillness, and through quietening the mind.
For both Clémence Overall and Mark Wotherspoon, the opportunity to embed in place, engaging daily with the landscape, and the people who care for it, has been the great gift of their time at Dunmoochin. Recognised for it’s cultural and environmental significance, the rural landscape and stony native bushland around the artist’s colony has attracted the attention of many of Australia’s most prominent artists including Clifton Pugh, Arthur Boyd, Charles Blackman, Fred Williams and John Olsen.