1972 was my HSC year. In English, I had 'accidentally' chosen "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" by James Joyce, on the basis of its length. Bad choice in one way, Joyce is not simple, but good in another: I have an abiding love of the English language. Advanced English had "The Tempest" as its play. Same effect. For poetry, we studied both Keats and T.S. Eliot. I was lost forever - I've collected over a metre of poetry over the years.

Our English teacher, Fr. Paul, had done his PhD on the works of Patrick White, and we had "The Tree of Man" in the mix somewhere, which I hated. But his enthusiasm for the language in all its forms was infectious. I had bought a copy of an album by Mary Hopkins (Earth Song/Ocean Song), and was particularly moved by a song called "Martha" so I lent the album to him. While he found "Streets of London" more interesting, we had discussions on the poetry in both of them.

1972 was also the year that I first fell in love. I'd always been shy and awkward, and never had a girlfriend. I met Jane in June 1972, at a birthday party for a young lady who was a member of a youth group I belonged to, and many people from that group were invited, as were many of her school friends. There was a fair amount of crossover - quite a few of the girls from Loretto Kirribilli were also going out with some of my class mates from St. Augustine's.

I remember standing chatting with my friend Craig and two girls walked up to us, and one, directing her comments to us both, but looking at me said word to the effect of "Are you guys just going to talk, or are you going to dance with us?" That was how I met Jane, and I danced with her for a while while Craig danced with her best friend. But after a while, we just moved off the dance floor a way from the noise, and most of the rest of the night we just talked and talked and talked. It was magic, I'd never found anyone that I instantly connected to like that. 

I call it "love at first sight" although it wasn't quite, but was definitely love at first meeting. Even though I lived at Avalon, and she at Duffy's Forest (3 hours on public transport) we both instantly thought of ourselves as a couple. Most of the girls and guys in that group dated each other for a while, but their relationships wouldn't last, and there'd be a shuffle of partners. Average time frame was about 3 months. Jane and I stuck together - six months until the end of HSC were challenging, but we spent a lot of time on the phone, catching a date where we could while studying. I also started getting driving lessons because 6 hours travelling made it difficult, and night time dates were impossible without the help of parents. 

Along the way I started writing poetry for her. The romantics, especially Keats, had their fingerprints all over what I wrote. We had a wonderful relationship, because we always spent a lot of time talking and just doing things together. We both loved music, but I can thank Jane for introducing me to both David Bowie (in Ziggy mode) and Grand Canyon Suite by Ferde Grofé, both of which were surprising as her favourite band at the time was Slade. And then, at the end of September, it just ended. Something (to me) trivial happened, and in her forthright way she just ended it. She'd take an occasional short phone call from me trying to get her back, or to tell her my first year Uni results. Eventually her mum spoke to me and asked me to stop calling, because the calls were upsetting for her - clearly some feelings for me but she didn't want to continue in spite of that. She'd made her mind up and moved on. And that was on.

I was absolutely broken from that moment on. I went to see my old school mentor several days after the break, and he helped a bit with advice. I also took to writing more poetry, and I count The Cross as my first real poem - no longer trying to be another Keats, but trying to write things that came out of me. Paul and a couple of the other priests at St Augustine's seemed to thing that it and some other early things had merit. But I suspect that I would have been diagnosed as clinically depressed for several years after. 

In 1974, Paul invited me to come on a youth group camp with him at Vision Valley at Galston. Although nothing happened immediately, this one act eventually steered me towards a group of friends that I have kept for a life time. The first person to greet me was Mary Farrugia, and we remained friends until her death in 2021. None of it immediately stopped the loss and pain, but it allowed me to at least spend time not moping around. To be in the company of others.

Eventually I tossed out everything I had written to Jane. Not because it reminded me of her and amplified the hurt (it did), but because looking at it with fresh eyes told me that it was crap! The emotions were honest, but the words were derivative, stolen. I'm happy to write in the style of a poet I like, but it needs to at least be a worthy emulation. So everything went, replaced by the new me. So the feelings of this sad, depressed young man is often openly on display. Lots of them are clearly suicidal ideation. It's possible that the process helped me - by getting them down on paper, I took no action. It's also possible that it was all self pity and melodrama for me, or a way to call for help (although very few got to see them). I can't really tell from almost 40 years on. The only thing that I kept was Young White Rose, and I don't know if I wrote before or just after the split. It's not very good, but it's reasonably honest, and I may yet redo it.

So between 1973 and 1979, I wrote, I went to youth camps to try and heal and find someone who might find me worth loving, and worked. For a couple of years I did volunteer work as well. There were a few girls I had minor crushes on, and one who I would have liked to have a reasonable friendship blossom further, but nothing did. And I wrote poetry. Themes inspired by the bible and fantasy. Themes about the state of the world we we live in both the bad and the incredibly beautiful. Lots of darkness, about mental pain and death. And mid-1979, when I had fallen in love with Juliet, about poems about love again - poems that are fairly minor but are honest and have at least the merit of being my voice.

After we got married, being in a state of happiness, and with Juliet's continuous health problems, I wrote little. Until death came along and took away my daughter, and I wrote For Jessica. After I retired I had lots of aspirations, mainly musical rather than poetic, but I did start trying to turn the old poems into an e-book. And then again, in 2021, with the death of our friend Carmen, the muse woke me up and made me write Midwinter. 

I've also found notes and half finished projects, including an 18 poem "three dimensional" cycle, about 1/3 complete, the first few pages of a play and many ideas for stories. Who knows what I will get finished. But this project at least puts it somewhere where it wont be lost.