Amazing. Where does that leave you now? I believe that this is the one life we have. The issue I have with some organised religions is the idea of human exceptionalism. A lot of poor behaviour comes out of this sense that we are here for a special purpose: we’re above the environment, we’re above other animals. If I have any belief, it’s that we are very firmly creatures of this Earth; that this is the one life we have. I think we have bodily death, that it’s the same as spiritual death, and that’s the end of things. Maybe it’s bleak, but maybe it’s also about accepting and valuing what life is. It’s really precious. I don’t think that we get another go-round. Make the most of it while you’re here.

What are your commandments for writing poetry? Commandment 1: read. You cannot make any art without knowing what’s come before. Commandment 2: pay attention. Good poetry comes out of close attention to yourself, to your inner landscape, to the exterior world, to emotions. Pay attention to the connections between things, because that’s where metaphor comes from, that’s where symbolism comes from. These are the tools poets use.

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POLITICS

You’re a poet, but you’re also a strong advocate for changing standards in aged care. It’s one thing to have witnessed what your father endured, it’s another to advocate for change. What compels you to do so? I was astonished that someone like me, who’s educated, able to navigate systems and, therefore, able to get an appropriate outcome, couldn’t in Dad’s case. The hardest thing was weighing up whether to go public through the aged care royal commission. I was worried about Dad’s privacy, but I recognised that I had the capacity to do it.

You spoke at that royal commission in 2019 and its final report was handed down in 2021. Has the progress so far been rewarding or frustrating? There’s been a change of government, which is positive. The former federal government did nothing and, in fact, made things worse. But perhaps what people don’t appreciate is the scale of progress required to create an aged care system you and I would be willing to go into. Even if we achieved all of the recommended reforms of the royal commission, they don’t go far enough in creating a system in which you or I would say, “Yes, I feel totally confident, happy and comfortable going into that.” That’s the bar we need to be striving for here.

To what extent is poetry a political act? Poetry, inherently, is kind of oppositional in that it sits on the margins of literature. It sits entirely on the margins of any economic use. It’s marginal in so many ways. From those margins, you can often see and say things differently than you do in the mainstream. The way politics operates, where everything is in sound bites, dumbed down to the simplest level so that an idea can be communicated, poetry is the radical opposite of that. That’s what excites me about the form.

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