Sydney, 23 November 2023: Two celebrated Australian poets from Canberra travelled to Sydney to delight us with their prose at the final Ramsay Writers event at the Centre for the year.
The Ramsay Writers Series is a new Centre initiative designed to showcase established Australian writers. At each event, noteworthy writers read from their own work, as well as offering perspectives on influential past works. For 2023 the series is focussed on celebrating Australian poets.
English-born poet Moya Pacey joined Kerrie Nelson in an evening of contemplative poetry and verse, each author inspired in her own way by the influence of a unique cultural perspective from her country of origin.
Ms Pacey recited a dozen or so of her poems, most of which were inspired by her upbringing in the north of England following World War II, which her father served in. “Growing up after the Second World War [meant] dealing with enormous change and dislocation as a result of a world war and its huge losses,” she said. Several poems were inspired by members of her family, but they all conveyed the innocence and naivety of growing up as a baby boomer in post-war Britain; only distantly aware of the horrors and trials faced by her parents’ generation.
Woven throughout her own recitations, Ms Pacey detailed the great influence William Wordsworth and Elizabeth Bishop had on her, reciting several poems directly linked to both great poets.
Ms Pacey’s poetry was complemented by the distinctly Australian flavour of Ms Nelson’s work, which was much influenced by the author’s experience of working in rural Aboriginal communities.
Both poets, based in Canberra, have contributed to the women’s online journal, Not Very Quiet, which Ms Pacey began as founding editor, and which Ms Nelson has helped manage as a guest editor. Ms Pacey’s poetry has appeared in print and online journals and anthologies here and overseas. In 2011 she won the Elizabeth Bishop Short Story Competition and travelled to Great Village Nova Scotia Canada to receive her prize and stayed at the Elizabeth Bishop House.
She has produced three collections of poetry: The Wardrobe (Ginninderra Press), Black Tulips (Recent Work Press) and Doggerland (RWP), with the latter receiving a ‘highly commended’ acknowledgement at the 2021 Book of the Year Awards. Ms Pacey received a Canberra Critics’ Circle Award in 2019 for her work in exposing women’s poetry.
Ms Nelson named William Shakespeare and the Brontë sisters as influential, saying she became hooked on Shakespeare in high school, while thoroughly enjoying delving into the Brontës during her humanities degree. “I believe the humanities are critical for a well-rounded education, and wanted to understand the great writers,” she said.
During her career, Ms Nelson has published two poetry collections: Inlandia and Meaty Bones (both RWP). She was awarded the Judith Wright Poetry Prize for New and Emerging Poets in 2010 and has either won or been shortlisted in numerous poetry competitions, including the NT Writers Centre Poetry Prize, the Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize, the ACT Writers Centre Short Story Prize and its Poetry Publication Prize, and most recently the Canberra Critics’ Circle Award.
Over the past few years, Ms Nelson has collaborated with artist Cait Wait and the Warraweena Artists in exhibitions, readings and workshops at The Residence in Alice Springs and Burra Regional Gallery. Ms Nelson was introduced to the Darling River Aboriginal community while studying her Master’s degree, and has dedicated much of her poetry to writing about this and other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.
Ramsay Academic Director Professor Diana Glenn thanked both poets for travelling up from Canberra to delight all of those gathered with recitations from their wonderful works.