In the beginning God created
The heavens and the earth.
The earth was without form and void,
And darkness was upon the face of the deep;
And the spirit of God was moving
Over the face of the waters …
Genesis 1:1-2
Poems:
Midnattssol (1972)
Our Sunburnt Country (1972, Townsville)
Summer, Sun and Sand (1972, Townsville)
A Walk in the Summer Rain (1973)
Sunrise, Sunset (1973, Townsville)
Moonrise … Moonshine (3.viii.1973, Townsville)
Growing Up … (3.iii.1974, Townsville)
Light (23.v.1974, Townsville)Time (1974, Townsville)
Genesis (12.iv.1975, Townsville)
* Written for the Pimlico State High School film “Under the Summer Sun”.
Genesis II (27.vi.1975, Townsville)
Veni, vedi … (27.vi.1975, Townsville)
* For Fr. Mick and the Mundingburra Presbytery
Loneliness (15.ii.1975, Townsville)
Presence d'espirit (28.iv.1975, Townsville)
My Earth (4.ix.1975, Townsville)
From My Window (13.ix.1975, Townsville)
Morning (19.ix.1975, Townsville)
Reminiscences (1975, Townsville)
I don’t remember when I first started writing poetry, but it must have seemed like a natural thing to do. I loved English as a language and was a voracious reader. During my teenage years as well as poetry I wrote short stories and a bit of a teenage sci-fi novel. I won the occasional creative writing prize and had one poem published in an anthology of poetry by young people. Common themes in my imaginings were the Vikings, Scandinavia and the Midnight Sun and the wonders of the universe and the excitement of astronomy and space exploration. Here were the beginnings of a theme of exploration which has been carried into adult life. I would have loved to be an astronaut, but in those days women were not even allowed to be pilots in the armed forces and not being a citizen of a country with a space program was also pretty much a “show-stopper”. I later thought being a doctor on a mission to Mars would be pretty cool, but as that is unlikely to happen any time soon I will just have to stick to terrestrial expedition medicine!
Most of my poetry has been hand-written in the first instance, and the collection prior to 2004 had been painstakingly typed on an old-fashioned typewriter. These will gradually be transcribed into electronic form and added to this online collection. They span a period of approximately forty years.
