Good, if belatedly, to come across a generous and thoughtful reading on the praiseworthy Canberra-based literary blogsite, Whispering Gums of a couple of poetry collections published over the past twelve months, Helen Swain’s Calibrating Home and Vanessa Proctor’s On Wonder.
The two books were both published in 2024, and it’s a little amusing because Tasmanian poet Helen Swain’s collection, Calibrating home, was published by the New South Wales-based 5 Islands Press, while Sydney poet Vanessa Proctor’s collection, On wonder, was published by the Tasmanian-based Walleah Press.
Helen Swain lives and works in Lutruwita/Tasmania. She has been a teacher, performer (performing in Tasmania, mainland Australia, Berlin and Paris) and community arts worker. Along with Mary Blackwood, Eleanor March, Gina Mercer and Lyn Reeves, Helen was part of a dedicated team behind the publication of Quicksilver Water, a 2022 anthology of women poets who’d been meeting and making art in the heart of Hobart for nine years representing an age group of eight to ninety-three years.
The Hobart City Council generously provided a grant to fund publication of the anthology as well as enabling Oasis to pay contributors, and to further gift some remaining copies to the wider Hobart community … causing one minor hickup, Hobart Bookshop had a purchase enquiry at the time, and got in touch in Gina. ‘Hmmm … not sure, it’s not meant to be for sale, but not to worry, we’ve a handful left’, and I think a copy eventually made its way into the hands of the would-be buyer. Not sure if money actually changed hands….
Gina Mercer launched Helen’s Calibrating Home in Hobart last November, noting ‘this is a very good book’ (you can read the launch speech online at Rochford Street Review) that will
’tilt your world – as you might tilt your glass of clear tea as you sit in the late afternoon sun – admiring the play of light and viscosity and shadow – as you sip both tea and poems… because having your world tilted by Helen’s hands is good. Her hands are steadying and precise and full of thought. Helen’s hands are knowing in all the best ways. They are enlivening, compassionate hands that hold that necessary, slippery “glow-worm” (‘Hospital Waiting Room’) on which we all depend – hope.’
Of Helen Swain’s ‘Calibrating Home’, Whispering Gums notes ‘The poems in this collection slip between past, present and future, often within the same poem, as you can see in “Traced”. There is a sense of struggle, but also of tenacity and endurance. War is evident, in specific poems like “Meeting up (for Michael O’Neill, killed in Ukraine May 2022” and in gentle poems like “Teacups” (“Grandmother’s teacups/survived the war”) where the domestic collides with violence. The shock of violence or war, and the cold displacement of people, is never far away in these poems. But, neither is the domestic, the peace, the connections, the gentleness (in “Suzi and the Spider”), and the humour (in “Mary”)’.
Of Vanessa Proctor’s On wonder, Whispering Gums notes that the book ‘was given to me by on old schoolfriend. It comes from a poet steeped in the haiku tradition, but it meets Swain at various points. One delightful synchronicity occurs between Swain’s “Suzi and the spider” which tells of Suzi gently releasing back into the wild a spider that has come into her house, and Proctor’s “A dragonfly” in which the narrator carefully unravels a spider’s silk from a dragonfly to set it free. Both speak of gentleness and respect for nature, and of connections between living things.
Vanessa’s book has been well reviewed elsewhere since publication in December 2024, including a thoughtful piece by Michael Sharkey in ‘The Australian’ earlier year as well as another half dozen or so … you can find a couple on Greg Piko’s https://gregorypiko.com/2025/05/04/vanessa-proctor-on-wonder/ blog site, and Samantha Sirimanne Hyde at Grattan Street Press in September.
Helen Swain’s ‘Calibrating Home’ is available for $26 at Five Islands Press, while Vanessa Proctor’s ‘On Wonder’ is available at Walleah Press for $22.