“You've got part of the universe which in some way you seal off from the rest of the universe and within the boundaries of that you can build up relationships of form until such times as that piece of the world seems to go beyond itself.”
Andrew: “I’m probably primarily a visual artist. I studied visual art at the University of Newcastle in Australia in the 1990s, and I've always had an influence of visual artists…”
Peter: “Do you see words then as just another medium?”
Andrew: “I do and I think it's been quite an interesting way to develop because of working in different mediums You get more of an understanding of the sort of essential things and composition is one thing that I've carried across from visual art into the poetry, and imagery is another. I want the poetry to stimulate an experience, much in the same way as I want the same thing when I make visual art.”
“Definitely when I was younger I'd say my inspiration to write poetry was self-expression I used to write every night in the hostel and it was all free verse then, it was all expressing myself and getting things out and putting down my sensations and feelings and things like that.”
“But in the last 10 or so years, I've concentrated more on trying to make a composition out of my feelings and ideas and memories. In a lot of ways, it is a desire to make something timeless, I guess, from your experience. And so the craft of the poetry and the writing of the recent years, I've mainly written sonnets and I've laboured over them. They're not spontaneous works at all. They're not self-expression. They are definitely trying to build up some sort of vehicle that smashes through, to stimulate something in the listener or the reader or... I do a lot of drafts and really try to have that finished product until it has that effect on me, the sound of it and the feelings and the trying to make something that really holds up against time like that.”
Doing nothing is a necessary thing. I often find if I'm too distracted doing things, I do get caught up playing online chess and things like that or just keeping myself busy. And I find if I don't have that time where I'm stopped doing nothing,then the inspiration dries up. I often find I either don't have the desire or I always have a repulsion of doing any artwork.
And I often find if I just sit down and do nothing for sometimes only a few minutes, sometimes half an hour, suddenly I'll get an idea and I'm often excited and ready to do something again too. So you recharge a lot doing nothing, just not having your mind occupied.
Andrew Shillam is an Australian artist and poet. He studied visual art in the 1990s at The University of Newcastle and exhibits regularly with his wife the painter Rindi Salomon. He has been writing poetry since the 1990s when he became involved with The Newcastle Poetry at the Pub scene and has work published in small press journals, recently in the online journals “Studio La Primitive” and “Burrow”. He had a micro chapbook “A Midnight Tarot” published through the Origami Poems Project in 2023.
Peter Roe first met Andrew Shillam online through the group Forsaking The Mic. Andrew is based in Grafton, NSW in Australia. When Peter was visiting family in Queensland he met with Andrew at his home and interviewed him about his poetry.
Andrew’s micro chapbook “A Midnight Tarot” can be read as a pdf for free here.
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