1. You were born and bred in Queensland. What was that like?
I grew up in Maryborough, a regional town on the Mary River, dotted with beautiful old Queenslander homes and historic buildings that tie back to its industrial years centred on milling sugarcane and timber. It is also the birthplace of PL Travers who wrote the Mary Poppins books and Maryborough now celebrates the author with a festival each year. I was a child of the seventies and think back on my childhood as an idyllic time bathed in a soft pastel light —they were simple carefree days and I feel very grateful for them. I played tennis, rode bikes and horses and could usually be found with my nose in a book. I have endless memories of water whether it is the river, the Bay (Hervey Bay/Burrum Heads/what we now know as K’Gari), the beach, collecting shells, swimming, seafood. Dad was an artist so he was often painting and encouraged me to be creative. My first collection Wide River (Calanthe Press, 2020) celebrates the Mary River, and its mesmeric effect on me and place in my past.
2. When did you realise you were a writer?
As a primary school-aged child, I used to set myself up drawing and writing on the coffee table in the TV room. I’d sit cross-legged on the yellow shagpile carpet. It was my happy place! I wrote poetry in A3 scrapbooks, illustrating the opposite page with drawings in coloured pencil. Daydreaming and writing poetry were ways to navigate daily life, but also to reimagine it. I dreamed of being a famous writer! My world was solid, stable, very predictable and I guess writing helped me feel as if I could make unexpected things happen. I was a very keen reader and the authors of my childhood books were my idols. I suppose I knew from early on that I wanted to write. I wrote angst-ridden journals all through school and poetry and short stories throughout my twenties but lapsed a little during the years my children were young. I started writing poetry seriously again just over ten years ago.
3. Who influenced your writing? What were you reading?
My father read to me every night, and my earliest favourite book was an unabridged collection of Hans Christian Andersen fairytales — I was completely captivated by their gothic edge. I loved the witches, the forests, the dark magic of it all. Like so many other kids, I was also obsessed with Richard Scarry, Snugglepot and Cuddlepie and The Bunyip of Berkeley’s Creek. Then came The Narnia Chronicles and the magical lands at the top of the Faraway Tree. Anything that made the ordinary world feel full of possibility. As a teenager, I fell headlong into literary classics by writers including the Brontë sisters, Thomas Hardy, Daphne du Maurier but also Tolkien. I used to talk a lot about books and writing with my grandmother who was a literature and arts lover, and she was a massive influence on me. There’s a poem dedicated to her called ‘Scientists find more convincing evidence of Neptune’s diamond rainstorms on the anniversary of my Grandmother’s death’ in my second collection Ghosts Struggle to Swim (Calathe Press, 2023: 8).
4. Who do you read now?
I read widely. I move between poetry, fiction, memoir, and creative non‑fiction. At the moment, I’m reading How to Be a Renaissance Woman: The Untold History of Beauty and Female Creativity by Jill Burke, which draws fascinating parallels between women’s lives past and present. I’ll always have a few books on the go at a time – right now I’m also reading Hannah Kent’s memoir about Iceland, Always Home, Always Homesick, The Buried Life by Andrea Goldsmith and re-reading Ed Southorn’s poetry collection Pareidolia because I’m reviewing it. I’m listening to Susan Choi’s Flashlight on Audible. Some of my favourite contemporary fiction writers include Amanda Lohrey, Geraldine Brooks, Lily King, Rose Tremain, Colm Tóibín, Carys Davies, Donna Tartt, Eleanor Catton and Paul Murray. I like memoirists like Helen Macdonald with H is for Hawk. When it comes to poets, there are far too many to list, but three collections I’ve admired recently are Volta Face by Dominique Hecq, That Galloping Horse by Petra White (also published by Shearsman) and David Brooks’ The Other Side of Daylight and I loved the poetic memoir Storm Pegs by Jen Hadfield which is all about Orkney. I lived in Scotland for some years in my twenties and was in a weekly writing group there.
5. How do ideas for poems occur to you? What strategies do you use?
Sometimes poems drop out of the sky but more often I gather ideas together from keeping notebooks full of interesting words, lines that come to me or that I read in the paper, thoughts, pictures. Poems are a bit like puzzles – a layering, a piecing together. Sometimes they can flow quickly onto the page but more often, I need inspiration from somewhere— a painting, a photograph, a view, something I see through a window, a feeling that I need to write about. Movement is important to my writing. Changing my location can work well to trigger an idea so when I travel, I’m completely overrun with poem ideas and creative energy.
6. What challenges do you encounter when faced with the blank page?
Mostly, the blank page is an exciting place to be rather than a problem. I usually start any writing project with a brainstorm of ideas or points and build from there. Sometimes I start with a diagram or a sketch because I’m quite a visual thinker. I try not to get caught up in perfection to give ideas and thoughts a chance to breathe. Anytime I start to feel pressure, I have a stern talk to myself and tell myself writing is no use if I don’t have fun with it and it’s not making me happy. I like workshops and bootcamps if I ever feel a bit stuck. I go on walks. Take a drive somewhere I haven’t been for a while. I read a lot of other poet’s work, experiment with different styles and buy and order far too many books. Looking at art will always get me thinking in fresh ways and it’s a bottomless source of inspiration for me. But on days when I’m somehow not in the mood for writing, I send poems off or read instead. Devoting some time to writing every day definitely helps me. You can’t pretend to write. You need to do it, not let yourself off the hook because that’s not really being a writer, is it?
7. You’ve recently published a poetry collection, Gardening on Mars, with Shearsman Books. Can you tell us something about the poems in the collection and what inspired you to write them.
Gardening on Mars is a collection that explores being a woman in her fifties whose children are almost grown and who is learning to garden her life in the face of personal and planetary change. So, there are poems in the collection about environment and species loss and parenting late teens and dealing with loss and change. I suppose, at this point, my poems meditate about past experiences and ‘joineries’ in life. Many of the poems are confessional. Others are about the beauty of the natural world. There are four loosely thematic sections in the book: one about forests, one about flight, one about chance/serendipity and a section with mainly art-inspired poems. I studied art history as an undergraduate and some poems maintain a dialogue with visual artists and writers that interest me. The titular poem, ‘Gardening on Mars’ is dedicated to my son Euan on the day he turns 18, and it’s about the comfort he draws from nature to deal with life’s challenges. He designed the book’s jacket which is somehow very fitting and delighted me! I’m excited to be published by Shearsman because editor Tony Frazer is known for publishing a wide range of work – much of it experimental, and I’m published in amazing company.
8. Are you working on anything in particular at the moment?
I’m working on my next poetry collection, but also slowly writing a novel and working on an interesting collaboration with filmmaker and colleague, Dr Christine Rogers. We made a short poetry film last year called ‘Ten Days of Sky’ and have decided to start a new project in 2026.