Twinn Swan

When I wrote Kingfisher, I wanted to trace not just an individual lifetime, but a series of crossings: the slow and almost unalterable passage of a soul journeying through lifetimes. Each moment of longing, loss, and renewal was a part of the movement of a transmigration that never truly ends.

The kingfisher emerged as the natural companion to that exploration. Its vivid presence, its movement between water and air—between ascent and descent—mirrored the soul’s own restlessness. In those crossings, I found the language I needed to speak of the unbroken current that runs beneath all change.

The kingfisher, with its vivid transition between water and air, became the living embodiment of this ongoing transition. It embodies the tension between movement and stillness: the restless urge to cross boundaries and the silent depths where true change finally and eventually occurs.

My poetry sought to capture this tension, giving voice to the soul’s restless journey and the subtle thread of stillness beneath it all. The imagery of water flowing through the narrative mirrors that ceaseless migration, its currents symbolising both the visible path and the hidden spiritual undercurrent toward oneness.

Writing Kingfisher was an invitation for me to witness how the soul transmigrates—through the cycles of loss and renewal, exile and belonging—not towards an endpoint, but to an ever-deepening recognition of the transcendent unity within all movement.