Centuries of stanzas on the shelf

WORKING out of his Mount Egerton study, poet Craig Coulson doesn’t have to look very far for inspiration.

Tucked away in the room’s corner, surrounded by rows of shelving housing all manner of books is a fraction of Coulson’s collection containing more than 1000 poetry texts.

A writer of six decades, he said the works are an “eclectic” assortment of different eras.

“Of course, there’s the Australian poets, but I’m collecting ones translated from foreign languages,” he said.

“I’ve got a few Japanese, a Korean, quite a few Chinese ones with the Tang poets from about 580AD to about 800AD. The earliest I’ve got is Gilgamesh, from BC2000.

“According to my spreadsheet I’ve got 1071 and that includes a specialist collection I’m getting of World War One poetry from soldiers and people that were left behind.

“I started collecting a long time ago. My parents had a couple poetry books from Henry Lawson and Banjo Patterson because of course they did.”

Coulson gathered his collection that’s mostly made up of old paperbacks from second-hand bookshops, fairs and festivals.

Having started writing professionally since about 2005, Coulson is a member of Ballarat Writers and was one of the earliest contributors of the Words Out Loud spoken word initiative.

His poetry is often featured in acrostic, or word puzzle, form alongside works from Soldiers Hill Art Collective and Federation University creatives.

Coulson said although he’s “dabbled” in each book, he primarily uses them for inspiration in his own works.

“I won’t read a poetry book all the way through unless it’s a single poem which are horrible to read,” he said.

“It’s hard to have a favourite depending on what I’m writing. A lot of this is used as reference points and as inspiration.

“For example, I have one book where I took the last line of the poem and wrote another poem starting with that line.”