Hello Chris and readers of the TSRA blog.

I thought it might be a good time to introduce myself. I’m a writer who has been doing a long (40 years) apprenticeship in the craft and art of being a poet and storyteller.

I write in a relatively unpunctuated free-verse style, and focus on the capture and close examination of thoughts passing by and of imagery that suggests itself in the natural world around me.

Recently I attended a writing retreat away up North in the Queensland Rain Forest and came away having concluded a few things:

1. My apprenticeship is done. I consider myself a journeyman, now.
2. I am now officially in a state and stage of transition. From Psychiatric Nurse to Writer. From Writer to Author.
3. Not forgetting – Publisher.

In short, I committed to career transition in the lead up to an official retirement from my profession.

It was a very good Writing Retreat.

So, to introduce myself properly. My name is Frank Prem and I hail from the pretty little town of Beechworth, way down North Eastern Victoria (Australia). I have worked as a Psychiatric Nurse, starting out on the tail of an old Lunatic Asylum a few years before we closed all such creatures down and replaced them with a mess of significant proportions.

I often feel that I really don’t like poetry, over-much. I think the halcyon days were back in the 1800’s, when a poem was a critical form of communication to and for the illiterate, and galloping rhymers wrote to be memorised and their stories repeated around campfires in flickering firelight.

You don’t get that much, anymore, other than in pop sings on the radio.

I’ve written prolifically through all my adult years, often enough to try to unravel the madness I encountered routinely in my working day, but any reason at all would do.

In recent years, my work has taken off in leaps and bounds, as I discovered the existence of The Blog! I can’t say enough positive things about having a blog, and some folk that tune in every day to see what I might have come up with, and to chat to me about it through comments. This is gold to me, as I seek, through my work, to be a communicator of thoughts and ideas. An interpreter and a provocateur, using language that is accessible to anyone and everyone who reads it.

It is my particular delight to have a reader or listener (did I mention that I audio record my readings to audience? Wonderful fun) approach me to tell me his or her own story the memory of which was triggered by what I’d written or said. Very heady experience, and as addictive as breathing.

I’ve accumulated three blogs now. I find it hard to believe, to be honest. What happened was that I decided a while back that I needed to exercise a little discipline in my writing, or at least to experience some discipline. So I decided to write in seventeen syllables. Not Haiku. I don’t really get on well with Haiku. I do believe that a short form provides a nice challenge, to see if a whole thought can be captured in a few words. I’ll give an example, if you don’t mind, of one of my cloud poems. This is an exercise in contemplation of a photograph of a cloud, and allowing a form of meditation to take place (strictly in seventeen syllables, of course).

A Book of Clouds #22: aurora drawn (dancing)

I take

my pad

ink

an aurora

of clouds

dancing

in their own light

~

The Cloud series is upwards of 200 poems and pictures, now, and there have been, and will be, more. They’re all at seventeensyllablepoetry.

In the last couple of months, I have been working like a fool to indie-publish a print-on-demand collection of poems. In the next few days, Frank Prem Author (me) will have a free verse memoir – Small Town Kid – published by Wild Arancini Press (also me), and distributed through all the wide world in paperback and e-book, and even my own home town here in Beechworth. Check out the cover:

That brings me to the third blog, because every author (me again) needs to have a proper author blog. Mine is so-so and needs some work, but it exists and it is HERE. I recommend the audio recordings. I’ve had a great time with those.

In all seriousness, Small Town kid is a good read, and it tells of growing up in a small rural town in Australia in the 1960s and 70s. It is the first in what I hope will be a long string of poetry collections that, I believe, readers will enjoy.

Thank you for the opportunity of introducing myself. I’ll be delighted to chat to anyone who might want to ask any questions.

I’m found on facebook, HERE.

There will be Author pages at all the outlets in a very short while, but the book has to be listed before I can do all that.

Soon.