How the Hell Did I Become a Poet? by Nigel Ford

Reader of Lips and Books

I was raised in Elizabeth by a loving mother who was very ill and heavily medicated and a highly successful father who was physically and emotionally absent except for evening meals in front of Channel Two, which he then snored through till bedtime. I was almost deaf and taught myself to lipread as a child until I had an operation to get my hearing back at 10 or 11 years of age.

Deafness was something I didn’t comprehend until I was sitting in a classroom at nearly 18 years of age learning about people with disabilities. The teacher said, ‘You will notice deaf people never make eye contact because they are reading your lips.’ If I hadn’t been sitting down at the time, I would have fallen. I had never made eye contact in my life. I always felt different, unusual and didn’t quite fit in with the crowd.

When I was a child, my mother read a lot of Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh and Dorothy L Sayers crime novels, and I read her books, which became my favourites too. I dropped out of Matriculation to become a writer, or at least, that’s what I told my mother when she asked.

Mum jackboot Johnnied my dream, and under her influence, I joined the SA Police Force and spent nearly three years studying to become a Cop who would protect his community from the bad guys. After that, I was going to be a politician and do good for my country. Poor deluded fool I was! While locked inside the Police Academy 3 or 4 nights a week, I read science fiction, crime thrillers and action novels, including Ray Bradbury and Alastair MacLean.

Disillusionment

One hour into my first shift after graduation, I stopped the bashing of a defenceless drunk by the senior policeman in the City Watchhouse and told him what I thought of that thuggery. I became the outcast. I turned to alcohol a few months later when things didn’t get better and later to smoking pot and self-destruction for several years.

In the long periods of unemployment that ensued, I read voraciously. My favourite authors were: Frank Herbert, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Larry Niven, JRR Tolkein, Tom Clancy, James Clavell, James A Michener and others who captured worlds real and imagined in their novels, many of which were over a thousand pages long. I often buried my face in longer books or a series of stories for a week or more.

A Spiritual Slap

When I was 25, my father, who I had never gotten on with and never would, shook my hand and said, ‘Congratulations son, you’ve just wasted one-third of your life. What are you going to do with the rest of it?’

His remark made me evaluate my life. I decided to take control of my behaviour. I settled down, found employment and a girlfriend and became a father at 26, I joined the YMCA as a Youth Leader and returned to study. I partly completed an Associate Diploma of Community Work specialising in Youth Work. During my studies, I discovered psychology which opened my mind to many things.

I learned that life doesn’t just happen to people; that individuals are responsible for putting themselves into situations which might logically have adverse outcomes. This understanding changed the direction of my life.

I returned to the workforce and became a Jack of all trades, though Master of none. I worked in many jobs, but the role which gave me the greatest joy was when I was helping others.

I’ve been a Drug Counsellor, Employment Case Manager, Youth Worker, Harassment Contact Officer and Union Rep and more. During this period of life, I continued to read many books discovering Douglas Adams, Ben Elton, James Herbert, and returning to some of my High School curriculum’s wonderful books, including To Kill A Mockingbird, Brave New World, 1984 and Animal Farm.

Turning Negatives Into Positives

Before my 41^st birthday, I was seriously injured in a minor vehicle incident when I hit a pothole at one kilometre per hour. The resulting spinal neck injury was at the highest scale of seriousness and pain levels, and I became incapacitated for anything resembling an ordinary life. I became caught up inside a Workcover nightmare after which, I was later told by my solicitor, nearly 1 in 20 commit suicide. It was a horrific experience I almost didn’t survive. At this time, I dabbled in poetry as a way to cope with depression.

Seven and a half years later, a payout came my way. It freed me from Workcover and their disgusting insurance employees, agents and representative scum to try to find a life that was worth living despite permanent disabilities that I will live with for the rest of my life.

In June 2006, the day I was offered an escape from the Workcover nightmare, I read the Messenger Newspaper with an article about the Salisbury Writers Festival 3-Day Novel Race. I brought back my original dream to become a writer when I dropped out of high school 31 years earlier.

By then, my mother had died, so nobody was there to jackboot Johnnie the idea of becoming a writer, so I entered. I wrote a crime story about systemic abuse within an aged care institution, something anyone could find themselves experiencing, and won the Third Prize. I went to the Presentation Night and received $250 and a certificate, and became hooked on writing.

Paroled To Victor

In 2007, I moved to Victor Harbor and joined the Middleton Writers Group to try to improve my writing skills. I wanted to explore possibilities because I believed I had the stuff to write the great Australian novel that captures an audience around the world. I still had aspirations (delusions) of grandeur as a novelist.

Around this time, I also entered a 5,000-word limit Murder Short Story Competition, which I won. I received $350 First Prize with publication as the first story in the Geebung Anthology in 2008. The SA Crime Writers 1^st Anthology, The Killing Words, later republished this story.

There were several excellent poets in the Middleton Writers Group, including the wonderful Keith MacNider. His way with words and deep, resonant voice inspired me to pull out my pad and pen to write poems, even before he had stopped reading his. Thus hooked on poetry, I have since rarely written anything longer than a 4-minute rant poem.

My poetry has been cathartic. I have externalised my negative thoughts and frustrations in positive ways by writing the triggers of self-doubt and destruction out of me. I even learnt to forgive my father for the apology he never offered.

My Passion, My Poetry

I discovered my passion for poetry at 50 and have enjoyed some wonderful successes. I won the Australian Poetry Festival Slam in Darwin in 2012 and other slams. Numerous anthologies both here and interstate have published my work, and I often feature at poetry gigs in Queensland, Victoria, Northern Territory and South Australia.

I founded the Goolwa Poetry Cup and the monthly Poetry On The Fleurieu readings at Goolwa and MC several events in Murray Bridge and the Southern Suburbs for Friendly Street Poets every year.

Friendly Street Poets invited me to join the Committee in November 2016 and elected me as Convenor in May 2017. I have thoroughly enjoyed my time at the head of this organisation, the largest and oldest poetry group in the Southern Hemisphere.

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I still intend to write the great Australian dystopian novel of the future and make my mark on the world writing stage, but I’ll never give up writing poetry.

AUTHOR BIO

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Text, poetry and images remain the copyright of the author. Photo credits for Goolwa Poetry Cup photo by Trentino Priori and Poetry on the Fleurieu photo by Phil Saunders.