love, regardless

Love, regardless is my newest collection of poetry published by Hybrid Publishers.  It celebrates love that endures over time, in all its complexity and messiness.  The narrative poems capture the real-life experiences of fourteen Australian couples, representing a diversity of experience—of cultural affiliation, gender identity, migration and work in academic, music, business, literary, justice and legal worlds. 

Each couple faces unique trials; they age and change, the unexpected happens, but they move forward, together, regardless.

My inspiration for this new work lies in my personal fascination with long love and my own unexpected marriage late in life.  Culturally we’re inundated with romantic narratives which dramatise the passionate beginnings of young love and/or detail its devastating endings.  But what about couples who survive the years together and still remain devoted?  What do we know of their stories outside stereotypes of the stale, faithful or boring? 

My answer—NOT ENOUGH.  And so I set out to interview couples who have loved together at least twenty years, exploring the intimacy of first connecting, as well as the invariable complications negotiated along the way. 

But this is not a collection of tedious Q and A conversations.  It features a dynamic mode of storytelling—based on interviews but transformed into rhythmic syllabic verse.  It is a unique hybrid genre, at once dialogic and poetic—told in a form that looks like poetry and reads like prose.

The characters in this volume are actual people, the events they recount really happen, but these are tales of love, so the telling needs to be poetically crafted, to get to the heart of things.  Setting out the stories in stanzas and line breaks creates a visual spaciousness that retains the vitality of speech and enhances narrative pleasure. 

I’m excited to share this work.  I believe Love, regardless will have wide appeal for poetry lovers and prose readers alike, who will appreciate the vibrancy of these lyrical, hopeful stories.  Stories of enduring love make real the possibility of mutual care and nourishment over a lifetime, more critical than ever in times of pandemic and unprecedented local/global disasters.

Purchase the book here: https://www.hybridpublishers.com.au/product/love-regardless/

Excerpt from Imogen and Luc

Imogen

Sam’s studying law, I’m doing social work.  Our lives are on

track, intertwined.   We’re doing fine.  After we graduate it’s

off to Melbourne for a challenging job.  We love each other but 

not the rapture I’ve known with Luc.  In time Sam wants kids, a house,

combined incomes.  I resist.  We persevere.  I’m travelling

to New York for a forum in two thousand and nine.  Quebec’s

not far away so I arrange to stay for a week with Luc

and his girlfriend Chloe.  What am I thinking?  Is he madly

in love with her?  What do I wear?  I remember arriving  

at Montreal Airport—completely focused on hugging her.

Go to the girlfriend first.  She’s from France—we double kiss, Luc hugs

me.  Okay this will be fine, I think.  Fine.  That first night I’m wedged

on the sofa between them, charged by magnetic tension I

can’t tolerate.  Each day I explore the city, Chloe off 

to the lab—she’s a biochemist—while Luc translates from home.

Third day is bloody hot—I return mid-afternoon, shower,

collapse on the chair in his study, legs propped up on the wall.

He’s typing and suddenly stops.  It’s weird isn't it?  I swing

around.  What?  I still feel it.  Je t’adore.  It’s too hard to have

you in my house.  Oh My God!  I love him, of course, but I have

a partner and so does he—we can’t do a thing about it.

The last four days are torture.  Nightmare drive to the airport, she

in the back seat, my stomach aching, Luc feels ill—them walking

away—he glances at me over his shoulder, disappears.

Luc

Finally we speak about the elephant in the room.  We

trace over our history—everything that’s happened since

meeting in Cairns—Chloe and I three years, she and Sam seven.

We have to stick with raison.  But talking openly is so

explosif—dissolving all barriers.  I don’t know what I’m

hoping.  J’adore Chloe.  But the connection with Imogen

consumes me.  I want the truth.  But after she returns to

Australia and breaks up with Sam, it goes straight to my guts. 

She actually does it!  Do I do the same?  Take a leap

of faith?  I say Non.  Ma vie est dans Quebec.  My translating

work can follow me anywhere so that’s no excuse, but friends,

the city, I’m building my roots here.  And I am uneasy

loving two women, it’s not right.  I need to decide and stand

by it.  Head and heart in struggle again.  With distance the head

gains power.  But I never stop loving Imogen.  Jamais.