Gavin Austin

I am a member of the Australian Haiku Society, a Writing Fellow of the FAW NSW Inc., and an occasional co-editor of Echidna Tracks – Australian Haiku. The Drifting Sands Special Feature, Girt by Sea was my undertaking; the partnership of my photography and poetry from Australian writers. I hope you have had a chance to explore this special feature.
I currently have two published poetry collections: Shadow Play, Dragonwick, Aus., and changing light, Alba Publishing, UK.

There are many people that have assisted me on my writing journey; from my first attempts at free verse poetry and prose, to the subsequent discovery of haiku and its related forms.

Australian author Jack Radley, the great uncle of a friend, first caused me to become serious about writing. Encouraging me to write short fiction and poetry, Jack was delighted when I began to have success in competitions, or work was accepted for publication. However, Jack’s honest critique of my prose was that I tended to overwrite. In his words, he sometimes had to ‘move the furniture to see the room’. Years later he admitted to having worried that he had been too hard on me. I assured him he had been tough but fair, and that I had taken heart from his continued encouragement. He remained a dear friend and mentor up until his death in 2008. To this day I miss him terribly.

In 2000 I enrolled in a creative writing course with Australian writer, Kate Walker, who has also been an influence with my writing. Always generous with her time and writing advice, Kate has become a valued friend and remains an inspiration to me. Like Jack, Kate was honest yet nurturing as she pushed me for improvement.

My interest in haikai poetry was piqued by a chance meeting with well-known Australian poet and editor, Beverley George. Beverley had judged the poetry section of the Manly Arts Festival Literary Competition and I attended the Presentation evening to accept an award. At the time, I wrote short fiction and free verse; both of which I still write today. It was this meeting with Beverley, and the shared ferry ride back to Sydney’s Circular Quay, that Beverley sat with me and urged me to consider writing haiku and tanka as it would be helpful for all genres of writing.
How true those words from Beverley proved to be. Finding the focus of haiku has indeed helped me to write more efficiently. I was drawn into the allure of haiku initially, followed by tanka, and more recently, haibun and tanka prose.

My early childhood was influenced greatly by my maternal grandfather. Grandad was a born storyteller. My earliest memories are of sitting on his knee and listening to stories. He did not read bedtime tales but created his own, complete with my friends and pets as characters. I demanded more and he always fulfilled my request with stories that were never exactly the same. Grandad owned property in the picturesque region of South-East Gippsland in Victoria, Australia. He was a grazier; raising sheep and beef cattle. I attribute to him my love and respect of nature and animals; particularly horses.

I was about three years of age when he sat me on his old palomino mare and my lifelong love of horses was born. Instilling in me a love of nature, Grandad pointed out the everyday splendour about us. We took time to observe the changing colours of a sunset, the mist in the treetops, and the sunlight on distant blue hills: the extraordinary in the ordinary. I am so pleased I learned to appreciate this simple beauty; it is something I hold dear in these more troubled times of this modern world.

In primary school I was often asked to read my work to the class, and in secondary school my poetry usually made it into the Year Book. Later, when my work first found publication, people often commented on it being ‘dark’. I imagine that is due to losing, in my early life, so many people close to me. I write about what moves me and I am willing to tackle some of the difficult topics. What a perplexing contrast to the observation of nature’s wonder, and trying to distill that experience within seventeen syllables. Perhaps there is a pursuit of childhood magic within the confronting complexities of adulthood?

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Some favourite previously published pieces

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Likeness

Empty eyes wait to be filled by the bottle jammed beneath your arm. The bagging sleeve of your worn cardigan gapes. Grey threads tangle into a cobweb of neglect.
I count the lines framing your eyes as you squint into the light, face gathered into accordion pleats. Cracked, down-turned lips lie in shadows; watchdogs guarding against a smile.
Alone on the step in an empty doorway, you slump against graffitied walls steady as tattooed arms that may have once held you. Were those arms a harbour? Or a cage?

              colours and shadows 
              in a shop-front window . . . 
              the way light falls

cattails, April 2021

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Surrender

Will I know if I have it? Will it kill me? Or will I welcome it? Invite it in to settle comfortably beside me like an old friend? Defeat thrashing and wrenching in my gut, steadfastly embedded there like the barb in the jaw of a hooked salmon. Once unclouded eyes, glazing to the spiritless stare of road kill. A growing ache advancing within, to quietly seep through my tributaries; its suffocating tendrils spreading through bone and sinew. Thought arrested and locked down along honeycomb chambers of the mind; sinking to foreign depths, with a silent ripple, encapsulating me.

            does death have a name
            a sound or smell
            perhaps endings 
            are beginnings in disguise 
            I think of love like cancer

Contemporary Haibun Online #17.2, 2021

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Some examples of my photography

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—Gavin Austin, Elizabeth Bay, Sydney, Australia

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Here are links to previously published drifting sands pieces

Tides

The Vigil

Battlefields

Unlocked

Annulment

The Bridge