September 2022: Place

This is the first issue of Burrow that I worked on with Phillip Hall in order to create a provocation. I suggested to Phillip (dad) that we have an issue on mental health through the prism of place because a love of poetry about place is something that he and I share. Phillip completed a Doctorate of Creative Arts on Australian nature poetry in 2012, gathering points: AUSTRALIAN POETRY: a natural selection. Also in 2012, I enrolled in and completed an honours thesis on poetry of place, A Reconfigured Romanticism: Place-based poetry of the Shoalhaven and Southern Highlands.

Place is not only important in an academic and creative sense. Mum and dad moved around New South Wales a lot when my siblings and I were young. We were all born in Dubbo and by the time I was six we’d moved to Penrith (a 4 and a half hour move). We stayed in Penrith for a couple of years and then moved three hours away, to Orange. After another couple of years, we made the final BIG move as a family. We moved four hours from Orange to Kangaroo Valley. The last move that I made with the family was only a little move up the mountain, from Kangaroo Valley to Mittagong. I’ve stayed in the Southern Highlands ever since. All of this moving means that I have strong connections to a number of places in New South Wales.

Part of what makes the connections I have to these places so strong is the continual presence of friends and family in these places. Martin Christmas’ ‘Backyard Spirits’ and Margaret Zanardo’s ‘DOUBLE DARE’ captures some of this idea about place that I am trying to communicate; that place and our relationships with it are not solitary experiences. While we each have individual experiences of place and places can impact on our mental health in different ways, we are never really completely alone in these places. Afterall, the places that we inhabit have all been inhabited by others before us. The place that I write to you from now, my home, has been owned by three people before me and sits on the unceded land of the Gundungurra people.

Margaret Bradstock’s ‘Poem for my daughter’ explores the impacts places can have on us. They can take something from us and they can give something. They can make us afraid or give us hope and a sense of renewal. Anne M Carson similarly crafts a poem about the healing qualities of connecting with place and the people we share place with in ‘Aurore on the benefits of exercise’. Other poems that explore the potential of healing, the therapeutic capability of place are Michele Fermanis-Winward’s ‘With Open Arms’ and Hazel Hall’s ‘On Driving Down North Jindalee Road’.

I have been slow on getting this issue published. This year has been the hardest yet of my teaching career. The teacher shortages and increased administrative tasks assigned to teachers has had a real impact. I’m grateful to the healing offered through the experience of place in many of the poems in this issue. I’m grateful for the community of Burrow. I have gained some sense of renewal and refreshment while on school holidays, partly through the exploration of place in these poems, partly because I have the time to sit and be, and partly through the experience of being seen. Thank you to all of the poets in this issue who have been patient and understanding. I truly felt seen and supported as I juggled full time teaching, home renovations (we had flood damage earlier in the year and are clearing a spot for dad’s granny flat), my university studies, and Burrow.

To purchase Phillip’s most recent collection travel over to: https://recentworkpress.com/product/cactus/

Rhiannon Hall (managing editor)

Three Poems From TWO NOVEMBERS… by Liza Achilles

the projectionist by Geoffrey Aitken

The Graduations of Light Were Amazing by Jennifer Allen

My Life by Duane Anderson

First day falling by Susan Austin

abberation by Eugen Bacon

playing volleyball at Maryville Academy by Jan Ball

Scars by J V Birch

Space by Erina Booker

Poem for my daughter by Margaret Bradstock