I’m delighted to welcome poet, Elizabeth Barton, all the way from New Zealand to Patricia’s Pen. This timely feature also corresponds with the launch of her gorgeous poetry pamphlet, Mirrored Time, which was released on September 1st by the awesome Hedgehog Poetry Press.
My Writing
Elizabeth Barton
Writing is a perilous act. As someone who used to do scary things for a living (I was a professional pilot for 12 years), I quickly became comfortable with it. For example, one of my first poems, published by the wonderful Spillwords Press, appeared on Twitter. As a reward for the publisher’s generosity, I was trolled to hell by a woman who obviously enjoyed getting high on marijuana and then sat at her keyboard to spill her own. The temptation to hang her out to dry was almost too great, but I stayed my hand and redirected my energy into writing a poem, like redirecting a raging wier through a sluice. The poem, Trolls, eventually featured in Amphora. Our Own Mythologies. It is now fittingly part of my rebellious pamphlet All Revolutions Begin This Way.
I never had any formal training in literature – no MA in Creative Writing or any writing course – other than a solid basic education at primary school in New Zealand with emphasis on reading, writing and ‘rithmetic. State schools in New Zealand were reckoned to be the best in the world at that time. Creative writing was emphasised and I still remember all the poems read to us by teachers at school. At college, a teacher encouraged my forays into poetry at the time – I was 15. But I went on to study fine art and threw myself into an arts career. But somewhere writing stirred.
I don’t know how it happened, other than I woke up one morning and knew I was a poet. It was in 2018, not long after my mother had died. She lived to almost 102! Apparently, this occurrence is common, especially among women of letters. It’s as if it’s some Goddess archetype is at work, a rite de passage.
I love poetry performance. I’m an incredibly introverted soul – I scored 67% on the Briggs-Myers scale for introversion! But poetry and a stage to strut upon is like lightning and glycerine to me. On I go and poom! One result of the poom! effect was winning a poetry performance gig on National Poetry Day in 2019. A more recent effect was silencing a rowdy pub full of Waikato farmers at an Open Mic event when I read my poem The Miner’s Triumph.
View the poem on Youtube HERE.
The Miner’s Triumph features in my latest collection Mirrored Time and is one of my personal favourites.
Much of my poetry concerns the love of nature – and time, self and memory, as one reviewer aptly put it.
About Elizabeth Barton
Elizabeth Barton is an artist and poet from New Zealand whose work is featured in numerous Journals, including Spillwords.com, Fevers of the Mind, Pink Plastic House, Hyacinth Review, Vita Brevis Press Nothing Divine Dies: the Poetry of Nature, and Literary Revelations Hidden in Childhood. She was a longlisted poet for the 2022 Dai Fry Mystical Poetry Competition, with work included in the anthology. Joint winner of the 2020 White Label Cinq Poetry Competition, her collection Mirrored Time, is published by Hedgehog Poetry Press. Her art is in private and public collections worldwide, including the Prints Collection in the V & A Museum, London.
Links
Patricia M Osborne 