Confessions of a Minor Poet

For any writer who has felt disillusioned or displaced, it may be a comfort to find Phil Brown baring it all in Confessions of a Minor Poet. He shows that writing poetry and crafting stories is never a matter of overnight success; on the contrary, it is a practice sustained long into the evening, after you’ve clocked off.

Brown is a journalist, poet and author, with his influences ranging from the likes of Leonard Cohen to renowned Australian poets Les Murray and Bruce Dawe, who acted as both advisors and friends to Brown as he took on the Australian literary landscape from the 1970s onwards.

This memoir captures the nomadic, hard-pressed life of a writer and poet. Brown takes us from his childhood in Hong Kong to surfing the waves of the Gold Coast, from a hospital by the sea to scrawling poetry in country towns, and finally journeying into the world of journos.

While writing for a range of Australian publications throughout the years, The Morning Bulletin in Rockhampton to The Courier-Mail in Brisbane, poetry continued to gnaw at him, demanding his attention. Everything else was mere filler. Brown earnestly recalls the bleak, dreary days of rejections, but also his array of successes. Many of his short, poetic musings are featured throughout the book, gently placed to reflect the season in which they were written. As we follow along as Brown recounts his life and struggles, his yearning to write, observe and essentially find a spiritual equilibrium in his everyday is quietly inspiring.

There’s an overarching sentiment throughout this memoir of never knowing when inspiration may strike as a writer, when poetry will occur right in front of you, and a sense that it’s the writer’s job to respond accordingly. No matter the circumstances, externally or internally, Brown has never stopped writing. He charges on even amid the uncertainty, and perhaps that will be his largest legacy.