My Poetry Work

Finding my way in the world of poetry

It was a strange and humbling experience to be ‘successful’ and ‘accomplished’ as an academic writer yet become a novice poet at age 60. 

Happily, I found the best possible mentors in two luminary Australian poets, Kevin Brophy (through courses at Melbourne University) and Jordie Albiston (through workshops at Writers Victoria and beyond).  And I found a new community of writers to read and critique my poems.  Enriching and absolutely necessary!!

I had minor success publishing poems in the late the 80s—during the grinding years of writing my PhD.  But truth is, academic life gradually squeezed out the impulse to be lyrical.  Retiring in 2007 made space to return to poetry—to text less constrained by academic debates, citation politics and the need to always argue argue argue your case.

I still remember the thrill of having my first poem Eggs published in the Age in 1987, under the editorship of Ron Pretty.  What amazed me was the flurry of Letters to the Editor in the days that followed.

Barbara R Kamler’s delightful verse ‘Eggs’ would strike a sympathetic chord with nearly all women.  It made my day; it says it all. [NP, Eaglemont]

I too enjoyed the poem, ‘Eggs’ and its message of mistaken martyrdom.  Not all men regard themselves as gods, requiring sacrifices.  The real drudgery is that of two people living so close together for so long without really communicating. [MR, Newborough]

MR’s comments about the beautiful poem ‘Eggs’ led me to appreciate that there are other men in this land of brittle feminism as sensitive as my husband. [SH, Blackburn]

Clearly my poem touched a nerve—and launched readers into dialogue about their own concerns, not necessarily mine.  Then as now I love the way a good poem can reflect back, pulling the reader’s eye from the surface to the depths of their own histories, emotions and concerns. 

Following the publication of my first collection Leaving New Jersey, I was struck by how often my book events and readings turned from the specificity of my minimalist prose poems to audience encounters with their loss, separation and yearning.  My words calling forth their experience.  In a recent interview Kevin Brophy articulates the alchemy perfectly:  ‘All I knew was I wanted to write from my heart and into the heart of the reader’  (Brunswick Voice, June 2021). This for me is the pleasure of poetry—quite unlike the more intellectual satisfaction of crafting an academic argument or articulating a new contribution to knowledge. 

As a ‘relative newcomer’, there have been so many fine poets to admire and learn from—Sharon Olds, Jane Hirshfield, Jordie Albiston, Sarah Holland-Batt, Elizabeth Bishop, Kevin Brophy, Don Paterson, Anthony Lawrence—to name a few.  My own poetry focuses on the personal and domestic landscape, on struggles for love, place and connection.  As I get older, my attention turns to late love, grandchildren, loss and legacy.  I strive to create sharply realised images and empathic depictions of the everyday, without sentimentality. Jane Hirshfield captures my aspiration precisely:

‘I am interested in poems that find a clarity without simplicity; in a way of thinking and speaking that does not exclude complexity but also does not obscure; in poems that know the world in many ways at once—heart, mind, voice, and body.’ [The Poetry Foundation]

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