The Black Rider Lines Interview

Mark: What, or who, got you in to poetry?

Maxine: Poetry always just seemed to be around. My favourite book as a kid was a picture book called Liza Lou and the Yeller Belly Swamp. I remember being amazed that writing could be so lyrical and poetic. Instead of Church clothes, there was Sunday-go-to-meeting-finery. Instead of being careful, plucky little ittle afroed Lou was told ‘mind you keep your wits about you’. The rhythm of it all was spell-binding. In my early years, my mother was a sometimes-actress. Sometimes, not because she wasn’t formally trained, but because she was a young, black actress in seventies and eighties Australia, with three young children. When we were old enough, we helped her with her lines and I remember then, loving the repetition and rhythm of calling out the line before hers, hearing and checking her response. I guess I never started writing what I’d deem to be real poetry until I was a teenager though. And predictably, most of what I wrote in those early years was cringe-worthy...

Read the rest of Mark William Jackson's interview with me over at the Black Rider Blog.