What about your own writing?
When I started writing in my first year at university, I had not yet been taught how to edit my work and had little grasp of how to use language economically, something that is all important to me now. I wanted to show off my vocabulary and would be surprised to get my assignments back full of corrections and comments in red for improvements to be made!
How does that change?
After studying writing for some time, I started to refine my writing style. It wasn’t until years later, when I became involved in the Melbourne poetry scene and started submitting poems to prizes and journals, that I started to hone my craft and really find my voice. As I matured, I thought more deeply about the issues, ideas and experiences I wanted to explore in my writing.
One of my first writing teachers was the late Judith Rodriguez, a celebrated Australian poet, who was a very good and patient teacher. She encouraged me very much and, through her example, I started to develop my craft.
Was poetry becoming your main interest at this point?
When I was at university, script writing was where I received the most praise. I fell into poetry, really. I won a couple of poetry prizes at the Williamstown Literary Festival. This was exciting and encouraging, so I kept submitting to see if I could write a better poem each time. I enjoyed the challenge of writing poetry, the precise choice of words required, the distillation of ideas and feeling. It became my main form of expression.
What about structure and form?
I write in free verse and find the idea of writing to form constraining. I don’t tend to think too much about this aspect of writing a poem. This may because I have a natural sense of rhythm, phrasing and musicality, having been a pianist since I was quite young.
So musicality would be your starting point?
When I was studying music theory, I learned about meter and composition. As a music student, you are given simple poetic verses to form into bars, create time signatures for, and then write a melody to. I have always seen music and poetry as deeply connected. However, my focus when writing poetry is always on what I am communicating and choosing the perfect words.
And how many book or collections have you produced?
My first collection was a self-published collection called ‘2012 and other poems’. Following this, I had a joint chapbook published with Robbie Coburn in 2016 called ‘The Silences’. ‘The Inheritors’ was published in 2021 by Black Pepper and my most recent book is ‘Taking Apart the Bird Trap’, published by Recent Work Press in 2024.
If you would like to see more of Amanda Anastasi’s work go to the links below
