WORKING out of his Mount Egerton study, poet Craig Coulson doesn\u2019t have to look very far for inspiration.<\/p>\n
Tucked away in the room\u2019s corner, surrounded by rows of shelving housing all manner of books is a fraction of Coulson\u2019s collection containing more than 1000 poetry texts.<\/p>\n
A writer of six decades, he said the works are an \u201ceclectic\u201d assortment of different eras.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course, there\u2019s the Australian poets, but I\u2019m collecting ones translated from foreign languages,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve got a few Japanese, a Korean, quite a few Chinese ones with the Tang poets from about 580AD to about 800AD. The earliest I\u2019ve got is Gilgamesh, from BC2000.<\/p>\n
\u201cAccording to my spreadsheet I\u2019ve got 1071 and that includes a specialist collection I\u2019m getting of World War One poetry from soldiers and people that were left behind.<\/p>\n
\u201cI started collecting a long time ago. My parents had a couple poetry books from Henry Lawson and Banjo Patterson because of course they did.\u201d<\/p>\n
Coulson gathered his collection that\u2019s mostly made up of old paperbacks from second-hand bookshops, fairs and festivals.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
His poetry is often featured in acrostic, or word puzzle, form alongside works from Soldiers Hill Art Collective and Federation University creatives.<\/p>\n
Coulson said although he\u2019s \u201cdabbled\u201d in each book, he primarily uses them for inspiration in his own works.<\/p>\n
\u201cI won\u2019t read a poetry book all the way through unless it\u2019s a single poem which are horrible to read,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s hard to have a favourite depending on what I\u2019m writing. A lot of this is used as reference points and as inspiration.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor example, I have one book where I took the last line of the poem and wrote another poem starting with that line.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WORKING out of his Mount Egerton study, poet Craig Coulson doesn\u2019t have to look very far for inspiration. Tucked away in the room\u2019s corner, surrounded by rows of shelving housing all manner of books is a fraction of Coulson\u2019s collection containing more than 1000 poetry texts. A writer of six decades, he said the works […]<\/p>\n