Starting again with poetry

Posted byChantelle GriffinPosted inFantasy Novels

You may be wondering what this is and indeed I have been rather quiet about it. For years I wrote poems, more than a thousand. By the time I was ready to consider publishing, poetry was being dropped off the submission lists. The message that went around was that no one bought poetry. So the project was shelved.

History repeats itself

In 2019 the first real interview with my mother, Sally, was released in a podcast “A Perfect Storm: The true story of the Chamberlains” by John Buck. My parents rarely speak about when we met the Chamberlain family at Uluru on 17 August 1980. The event is too painful and reminds them that it could have been us.

Expression in the form of words

My parents have always loved my poetry. For years I thought they were being completely bias. After all, isn’t that what parents do? I sent off some poems to John Buck who said I should publish them. It’s been almost forty years since I met Azaria. There comes a time when all that grief needs be let go. The book of poems has helped my parents talk about that day.

Azaria Poems

The book contains ten photos taken by my father on 17August 1980, and fifty poems about Azaria. These describe people, events and some of the emotions that went with it. The poems are quite personal and I have thought long and hard about publishing them. It is time for forgiveness and it is time to acknowledge the grief and loss of a beautiful baby.

Published by Chantelle Griffin

Chantelle’s mother remains one of the most famous witnesses in Australian legal history. The first large screen movie the author saw, at the age of nine, had an actress playing her as an infant when she was at Uluru on 17 August 1980 at the same campsite as the Chamberlains. She began publishing poetry later in life with the first release coinciding with the fortieth anniversary of the disappearance of Azaria. While most poems have been released in the volumes for the anthology, more than a thousand were written throughout a twelve year period. Chantelle has a Master of Environmental Planning and enjoys life at half pace with two cats. Her first fantasy book was released too soon, after a near death experience and a second edition was published four years later. She resides in Tasmania and continues to write as a past time in the evening.