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Finding challenge in verse
Will Jackson
16Jul08
Jordie Albiston thinks of poetry as a living and breathing art form. Picture: MARK FRECKER N03DV306
JORDIE Albiston loves the mathematics of poetry.
While most poets start with a subject they want to write about, she's more interested in working with the form's rules the syllable counts and rhyming structure to create something that "lives and breathes".
She will often find herself sitting in front of her laptop in her quiet Eltham study with a perfectly formed idea for the shape of a poem, but little idea of what it is about.
"I think the imagination needs some kind of holding pattern to restrain it, otherwise it's just talking free-flow emotion and that's not very challenging, really," Albiston said.
"For every rule in formal poetry, a creative window opens."
Albiston began writing poetry at a very early age her harshest critic was her grandmother, who used to mark her works out of 10.
But she abandoned the form for a long time to study the flute.
It wasn't until she was 28 that she returned to poetry.
The 41-year-old's works since then include a number of historical pieces, including Botany Bay Document: A Poetic History of the Women of Botany Bay and The Hanging of Jean Lee.
"In general, I prefer not to write about myself, but having said that every poem is about myself because I'm writing it," Albiston said.
"I guess I feel safer using another figure as a metaphor for my own experience."
Albiston is using her latest project, a book of sonnets, as an opportunity to explore how the form's strict rhyming schemes and structures interact with Australian speech patterns.
The book, provisionally titled The Sonnet According to M, will be Albiston's sixth, and funded in part by a $9000 Arts Victoria development grant.
Albiston said although Melbourne had one of the best poetry scenes in the world, it was impossible to make a living purely as a poet.
Securing the grant was like "winning Tattslotto".
"The grant means another year not having to go back into the workplace," she said.
"It's a gift from the gods; I'm over the moon."
* Albiston is the featured poet at the Courthouse Readings, 728 Main Rd, Eltham, tomorrow, July 17, at 8pm. Details: 9439 9732.
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