1.Vanessa, can you share a bit about your background? Where did you grow up, go to school, and what were you interested in as a young person?

I was born and grew up in Toowoomba, Queensland, although I have never really felt like I come from there. My father’s family are from western Queensland and my mother is of Tasmanian heritage. Both sides of the family have been here a long time – I am a 7^th generation Australian, and my children are 8^th generation. We trace back to the First Fleet. I have always found the idea of place and country really interesting and have explored a lot of my genealogical history. As to where I belong – I have to say I find myself most at peace when I am in the outback. Brisbane, like Toowoomba has always felt like a temporary home to me.

I went to school in Toowoomba and always loved learning – drawn especially to books and writing from a young age. Growing up in the late 1970s and 1980s as the child of a separated household often meant a lot of time spent alone or in the company of my grandmother. This environment almost certainly fostered a love of reading and creating as I turned to my imagination to help me transcend endless and often lonely holidays. I remember always being desperate to return to school again. 

I am still the only person in my family who has been to University. I completed a Bachelor of Arts (Journalism) at the USQ in Toowoomba, a Graduate Diploma in PR at RMIT in Melbourne and a Master of Professional Communication at USQ. I’m very proud of these 3 degrees, achieved with minimal support, and while working numerous jobs.

I also had my first baby right in the middle of my second degree. Somehow, I juggled work, motherhood and study and came out the other side – but always felt like an imposter, the black sheep at the back of the lecture hall with a baby in a pram. I have never forgotten the RMIT tutor who told me I would have to defer my studies because it would be ‘impossible to cope’. It wasn’t impossible, but it was challenging – and I graduated with distinction later that same year.

I wrote my Masters dissertation on ‘sporting tradition as a news value’. That seemed inevitable given my other great passion is Australian Rules Football, the influence of my southern relatives. I was hooked from the moment I saw my first match between Footscray and Hawthorn at the Western Oval in Melbourne. I’ll always remember my Year 7 teacher Mr Lee chiding me for turning in essays and work on the topic of football, explaining to me that an artist that only paints in one colour isn’t a very interesting artist. Later on, when I was working as a sports journalist for the Chronicle in Toowoomba, I ran into him at the Franklins No Frills supermarket where he admitted he’d been wrong about me!

2. When did you first start thinking of yourself as a writer? Was there a particular moment or experience that sparked it?

I’ve always thought of myself as a writer and was prolific from a really early age. I spent a lot of time on my own as a young person, often immersed in some kind of creative pursuit. I wrote a lot of poems in my school days, and sent many of them away to the local newspapers. I have kept the clippings of the published ones including my first published poem which was in the Sunday Mail in 1988, when I was 12 – a little haiku abouts stars in the night sky.

Life, as it does, has a way of taking over, and there was a long period when I was just trying to survive my 20s being a young mother, working long hours to make ends meet and continuing to study. I came back to my creative work in my mid-30s, after discovering a sheaf of old poems in a box of my things during a house move. I started reading and thought they were pretty interesting and that I might do something with them. I started to re-engage with writing again then. Ever since, it’s been an important, ongoing practice and scaffold for me.

I first connected with Brisbane’s poetry scene via Speedpoets – for many months going along to listen until I felt confident enough to participate. Some of the friendships and connections I made back then are still very important to me today. For a child who spent a long time alone in my creative pursuits I have found that connecting and sharing with the poetry community has been so important for my craft. I am lucky to have critical and supportive poetry people around me. 

Calanthe Press and its stable of poets are also a tremendous community and I really enjoy the readings, festivals and events that we do together – we are all so supportive of each other’s success. Calanthe does great work in showcasing Queensland poets – they have a real authenticity and great feel for good poetry.

3. Who or what have been your biggest influences as a writer? Were there particular writers, books, or life experiences that shaped your voice?

As a young child, I immersed myself in hard cover Enid Blyton books (and still have my well-worn collection) and later on loved fantasy novels and the classics. Over the years I have re-read ‘Tess of the D’Urbevilles’ and ‘Wuthering Heights’ multiple times. If I had to choose a favourite contemporary novelist it would be Tim Winton. I love how he describes Australian places and landscapes.

In terms of poetry, I admit I had no real interest when I was younger, but certainly since writing poems in adulthood, I read a lot of poetry – certainly many more poetry books than novels! I like the idea that a poem is perfect for consumption in a little pocket of time in your day. It doesn’t ask for much of an investment and offers a reading practice that is achievable to maintain.

There are a few poets I enjoy returning to. If I had to choose my favourite poetry books they’d be Judith Rodriguez’ ‘Witch Heart’, Jean Kent’s ‘Verandahs’, Robert Adamson’s ‘The Golden Bird’ and Sarah Holland-Batt’s ‘Aria’. The poems that stay with me are simple, domestic and beautiful, often with an edge – a couple of examples that come to mind are Gwen Harwood’s ‘In the Park’ and Robert Adamson’s ‘Elegy from Balmoral Beach’.  I probably don’t read enough international poets but I enjoy listening to the Poetry Unbound podcast which showcases a wide variety of work from around the world.

I have definitely been influenced by confessional style poets more broadly and this style is prevalent in my own poetry. There are also personal influences throughout my writing. I think for me the kernel of a poem always begins with a feeling or mood that I have experienced – and while sometimes I’ll build personas around this, sometimes it is just confessional!

It’s probably no surprise that ‘Confessional Box’ became the title of my first full length collection – published by Walleah Press in 2013. I’m still so proud of that book. The manuscript was overlooked for the Thomas Shapcott Prize (it was runner-up) but went on to win the Anne Elder Award in the same year. Winning the Anne Elder gave me confidence that my poetry was as good as anyone else’s.

4. How do your poems usually begin? Do ideas come from specific moments, observations, or emotions?

I’d say observations… more specifically lines, metaphors or ideas that come to me and which I jot down to develop later on (or not!). Sometimes I’ll have more of a narrative in mind – but my method is pretty Frankenstein-esque. I spent a lot of time on editing and grafting new poems from my collection of lines, ideas and scraps of words. In playing around with the ideas, that’s when the narrative components usually firm up and fold in.

While this is my natural working state, I’ve also developed many pieces of work in a more deliberate fashion. My chapbook ‘China Bull’ which was co-authored by John Koenig was inspired by a newspaper article about my great grandmother Annie Caroline Page. For this project, JK and I exchanged responses to parts of the article via email, with the end result a poetic re-telling of a scandalous 125-year-old love story. The manuscript won the 2015 Work + Tumble prize and a run of gorgeous letterpress chapbooks were released on the back of it.

My latest collection ‘Salt River: Poems from the Larapinta Trail’ – published by Calanthe Press, is another example. The book maps my personal journey along the trail – unfurled in concert with the geology of Central Australia and the ideas of md-life and erosion, adaptation and metamorphosis. It’s my most personal work to date and I think it’s my best – it’s definitely the work that is the most meaningful to me.

5. What are some of the biggest challenges you face in your writing process, and how do you work through them?

Time is still my biggest challenge, and it remains difficult for me to carve out time to write when I’m so busy with full-time work, parenting responsibilities and other commitments. I have found the discipline a little harder in recent years (I’m blaming the perimenopausal fatigue and brain fog for the drop away)! I find it helpful to get away occasionally with no distractions to write. Last year I travelled to Newcastle for a week-long residency through Lighthouse Arts and it was exactly what I needed to kick start a number of projects, and to complete ‘Salt River’.

I am a free-range kind of poet and I don’t adhere to any particular poetic forms. I write what feels good, reads well and looks good on the page. Everything in my process is done by feel. So, I’d call myself more of a domestic poet than an academic one.

Deadlines are very helpful for me, and my writing ebbs and flows around checkpoints. But it can be hard to come in cold to writing something new. My process will always involve editing first – either something unfinished or something that needs a little bit of polish. I need to enter into writing in this softer way before I can get new things to start to flow. I admire the poets who scribble away with pens in lovely notebooks – but I have found I can only write on a screen where editing is constant and in real time. I think maybe this is a perfectionistic bent – I hate seeing things that look messy or pages with lines crossed out and the like. That tends to stifle the creativity and the flow for me. On a screen, I can keep everything clean as I work and park lines for later on as I need (out of view!).

Sometimes I’ll pick up an anthology of poems and read a bunch of different styles of poems to help me kickstart a structure to begin. Immersion in poetry generally can be really helpful at this point – like the flurry of the changerooms as a team prepares to run out, scaffolding the players and getting them in the mood until the siren sounds and it’s time to play.

I can get deeply wedged down the rabbit-hole of ‘feel’ when I write and many times through the process need to step back and put a critical lens over it all. I have a bad habit of forgetting to take the reader with me at times, so often I’ll spend a fair bit of time making sure I’m communicating enough of the narrative thread that is vivid in my own mind. As a professional communicator outside of poetry – asking ‘why’ and considering the audience is always best practice.

For me, I have written a good poem if it makes me feel something or it makes a reader feel something. If it doesn’t have any impact – it’s not a poem of any value in my view.

6. What creative projects are you currently working on? Anything exciting on the horizon?

My focus in 2025 has been about continuing to promote ‘Salt River’ but also re-establishing a regular practice. I’ve struggled with consistency and that has been something I’ve been looking to correct. By the time this interview hits the website I will have headed off for another Lighthouse Arts residency in Newcastle.

This time, my focus will be on developing new work and also continuing dabbling in some short stories. I have always thought many of my poems could extend further into short stories and I’m keen to explore that a bit more. I’m also looking at assembling another manuscript while I’m away as I have plenty of single poems out in the world and published and it would be great to bring some of those together into a collection. I love tying neat bows on things.

Looking further ahead, there are a few things coming up for me including the annual Calanthe Garden Party readings and I’m also excited to be launching Trudie Murrell’s debut collection with Calanthe Press later in the year. In the meantime, you’ll usually find me involved with the monthly poets@stones readings in Brisbane. Run by Brett Dionysius, this is one of the best gigs in town, with a consistently packed house!

Vanessa’s latest collection, “Salt River”, can be purchased from Calanthe Press.