1. Esther, you are based in Tasmania. How did the place you grew up shape you as a person and writer?

Tasmania/lutruwita is an island, so it’s a world unto itself, and often left to fend for itself. We can’t rely on goods or services being here; we often find ourselves left out of national programs, and frequently left off the map. So we have our own culture: it’s resilient, and very self-driven. To be Tasmanian is to be often forgotten about by the mainstream, and to quite enjoy that; people who stay here tend towards introversion, and generally dislike crowds and the rat race. It doesn’t suit everyone, but in recent years, I feel thrilled that I get to live here, fifteen minutes from the beach, the massive kunanyi/Mt Wellington, the “city”, or the bush. It is home to so many world-class artists, who are generally outside the mainstream anyway. We have a freedom and access to nature here which are rare in the world.

Tasmanian poets are among the finest in Australia, and I was so fortunate to be mentored and educated by them as a young poet, notably through the Women’s Poetry Oasis monthly workshop series started by Lyn Reeves and Gina Mercer. Thirty years later, I am a co-ordinator of Poetry Oasis, and love giving back to the community and employing poets. 

2. When did you realise you were a poet?

Like many Tasmanians, then and now, I grew up in poverty. Dad and the extended family wrote doggerel poems as affectionate gifts to each other, read at big family gatherings. In Grade One, Dad helped me write a series of nonsense poems about dinosaurs, their strange names so fascinating in my mouth – pterodactyl, stegosaurus, Eohippus.  “Eohippus had a blippus / Sitting on his tail; / Said he, “I’ll take that blippus off / And post it in the mail!”The country school ladies dutifully typed up these creative masterpieces – I sometimes wonder what they made of them. At 14, Nanna bought me a Reader’s Digest volume of Top 500 Poems, and I fell in love with Keats and Shakespeare, their linguistic beauty and their heartrending passion, and wrote sonnets and odes and poems of teenage angst.  A poet came to my underfunded northern suburbs high school for a week, and I was astounded to realise that a poet was even a thing a grownup could be. 

3. How did the people around you react to that?

I knew I couldn’t make a living out of writing books, so at 15, I got a sensible office job, and that office turned out to be a corporate communications office, and my boss a former journalist. A miraculous apprenticeship began, where I learned craft and audience and editing, and I applied all that to my poetry, and was first published at the age of 22, in Imago. 

4. What are the biggest influences on your work, other writers, the environment, your inner life?

I have two drivers for poetry writing, and one is my inner life. My experiences, arising from generational poverty, trauma, and disability, have been hard. Writing a poem is how I make an artefact out of my grief or shock, an artefact which, though it may be hard to read, has beauty, and the power to reach out to connect with the experiences of the reader. Making a thing of beauty, of rightness, of use to others, is the way I transform my travails. It reconciles me. When I’ve written about a hard experience, I know I’ve processed it, and I can move onward and upward.

The second driver for poetry writing is language. This is where reading the work of inspiring poets is so helpful. I will often analyse a poet’s work looking for the mechanics, like a child taking apart a toy, asking, how did they do that? I find that is often my best teacher. When I want to write, I will often start by reading good poetry, because the poetic voice and music will trip my brain into the “poetry state”.

Another influence is the zeitgeist of the time: what needs to be said at that moment. I have written about women’s experiences, motherhood, and women’s autism/ADHD, which have all been under-represented voices at the time.

 5. How does a poem start for you?

Often it’s by spending time in that “poetry state”, by reading, going to a workshop, or working at home on my own, preferably with six or eight hours uninterrupted. This is a huge ask, particularly in a disabled single mother’s life, so it’s rare. I find that if I spend all day reading or working, the work I do that day may not be very good, but in the evening, a good poem springs forth fully formed, because I’ve spent that extended time in the “state”. A spa bath, or a wood fire, are other fantastic helps for me, and sometimes I’ll give myself that, with a night in an airbnb. Walks on the beach are helpful. Long drives. And sometimes, there is the gift, where a few lines come to me through the chaos of everyday life, without any of these helpful circumstances. 

6. What are the biggest writing challenges you face as a poet?

Disability equals poverty, as well as unusually high ongoing healthcare expenses. Even though I work as much as my health allows, financial survival is a constant worry. I also care full-time for two disabled adults in my family. Time and headspace are my challenges, as well as the financial challenge of getting off the island to network or read, which means that Tasmanian poets can be too expensive to bring to poetry festivals. As a result, though, my work is not esoteric; it arises out of the reality of struggle, which a lot of readers can relate to.

7. What are you working on at the moment?

It was my privilege to edit, with Andy Jackson and Kerri Shying, Puncher & Wattmann’s landmark anthology, Raging Grace: Australian writers speak out on disability; and my last book, She Doesn’t Seem Autistic, threw a spotlight on girls and women on the spectrum. Both of these books lay bare the mammoth societal barriers with which disabled and spectrum people contend. But both these books got me thinking about joy, how essential and medicinal it is, and, thinking about the zeitgeist, how much we need – in a world which is so hard – some books which are a nourishing space in which to rest, in which nothing traumatic happens. So I’m writing a new collection themed around experiences of joy. Interestingly, it’s posing new challenges; often, as writers, the trauma or drama is what drives the piece, so it’s leading me to read more widely, and to read more of the wise, consolatory US poets like Annie Lighthart. I’m enjoying the learning process of asking “how did they do that?” – taking my toys apart!