Hi, I’m Kim. I’ve had a wonderfully adventurous life but these days I dig up poems from the garden and spend my days laughing at the antics of my two little children.
I’ve been a sailor, adventure guide and community worker and you know what, it felt pretty audacious to decide to be a writer at 37, but once I started I couldn’t stop. In between juggling kids, I scrape minutes from the other side of midnight, stack poems while packing lunches and look at the world with fresh eyes.
I’ve had some encouraging successes with writing, but for me it’s more about a way of thinking and seeing the world. I love the idea that you can think a thought or feel a feeling to it’s very limits. You can take leaps and jumps, disappear down a hole of learning and reappear at the other side blinking, holding a tiny poem like a warm, startled bird in your hand.
The winding road to poetry:
I have an eccentric (large-hearted) father and he gifted me a diet of books (with a side of west-bix and powdered milk) alongside an adventurous childhood. We lived on a sailboat, a treehouse on a remote island and a small village on the weather coast of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands. As well as a haunted Tasmanian pub and a dozen other places between.
Throughout my 20s and early 30s I was lucky enough to live in and sail to many incredible places across the Pacific, the Caribbean and Latin America. One day my kids will tire of hearing stories about piracy, earthquakes, phosphorescent dolphins and sweet taro pudding, but I’ll carry the watermark of these experiences all my days.
Between my mid 20s to mid 30s, I worked as an expedition guide, adventure-based youth worker, facilitator. Later, facilitating training and programs for people working with at-risk young people in groups.
These days I live with my wonderful partner and our two children on a little bush block on Jinibara Country. It’s a whole new adventure.
Kim Kenyon 