Community & Business
13 February, 2025
Poetry reflects life’s turning points
AT NEARLY 80 years of age, Atherton resident Paddy Forsayeth has had some time to reflect on his life, from childhood moments to lost love, and everything in between.
But not everyone wraps it into a delicate book of poetry.
Hold My Hand, self-published through Bowerbird Publishing late last year, is a personal collection of poems written over several stages of Paddy’s life that had a profound impact on him.
From witty cowboy odes to young Billy, a character representing his inner child, the poems look for light in the dark, hope after grief, with the final written work a eulogy to his great love, Maureen.
It has had a cathartic effect on Paddy, as he explored his reactions and emotions.
“I understand myself a bit more,” he said thoughtfully.
“Most of the work is purely spontaneous, some poems are constructed - like the poems about my parents, which I wrote in my early 20s.”
Others had been borne out of grief, or from trauma, he quietly recognised.
“We’re brought up to deny grief and bury it,” he said. “But we need to embrace it, that’s a theme of the book, it’s a necessary part of dealing with it.”
Paddy was the third of 10 children. Born in Britain, he moved with his family to South Africa, before moving to Atherton in 1952.
They lived in an old farmhouse for three years, before settling in Victoria. He recalls an active childhood with his siblings, exploring, being outdoors, in their own world. They all had strict catholic schooling. At 15 his mother sent him away to NSW to become a priest but he left after two years, finished regular school and became a teacher.
By the 1970s, Paddy married and the couple had two children. They moved to Brisbane about a decade later and lived in the small town of Tara, where he also began building a house on the outskirts of the village.
But by the 90s, the marriage broke up.
“We were married for 19 years, and ... it was devastating. In hindsight, I didn’t handle it well,” he said.
“Emotionally, for most of my life up until recently, I was a teenager, a smart teenager - I was chief of the Fire Brigade, second in command of the road accident and rescue unit, I ran a science department at school, I was building a house by hand, then all of a sudden it just collapsed, and this book came out of it.”
Paddy started seeing a psychiatrist, who helped him navigate his feelings. It also drew on his love of words.
His subsequent poems reflected his growing understanding of his own frailties.
“I was brought up very naively, not taught about relationships, I had seven sisters and two brothers, so we basically had our own social group, so didn’t mix much with other people,” Paddy said.
“I always thought love was like the flu and you just got it.”
Paddy had realised he had never loved properly, and that realisation had ended the marriage.
It was while living in Roma years later, that he did find love.
He met Maureen and followed her to Atherton where they married and spent 17 years together.
“We had a beautiful relationship, it was wonderful,” he said.
“She died of cancer seven years ago. I still miss her.”
Paddy said he hoped his poetry struck a chord with others who were grieving and that it offered some solace.
Hold My Hand includes whimsical, uplifting observations throughout, but Paddy acknowledged there was “some searching in dark places”.
He described an image he had in his head, an analogy he said, of where he went in the book.
“I was underground in an area about so big,” he raised his arms high.
“It was completely dark, and no way of getting out (from above). The only way was to dive deep, deep, deep down and hopefully find a hole and get out.”
And did he get out? Was he at peace?
“It’s hard to know,” he said chuckling.
“I’ve done some extremely stupid things in my time... But I’m learning.”
