Kristyn Comino
23 December 2014: º£½ÇÉäÇø PhD student Owen Bullock has had his poetry on public health issues published on Crikey's popular online health blog.
Mr Bullock was invited by the blog to produce a series of poems about public health issues on request, having published five poems so far covering topics such as climate change, women's health and even gardening.
Mr Bullock was inspired to write one of the poems, titled reconciliation, after attending a lecture on Constitutional reform for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people at the University earlier this year as part of promoting the 'Recognise' .
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"I felt horrified at the lack of recognition for Indigenous people in this country and wanted to say something," Mr Bullock said, adding that attending Indigenous performances at the National Folk Festival also inspired the poem, highlighting the emotions of the performers.
"If I'm able to help publicise important issues such as the need for recognition of Indigenous people, then I'm happy," he added.
Having been invited to give a paper at the 'Poetry and Knowing Symposium' at the º£½ÇÉäÇø last year, Mr Bullock said he then chose to study at the University because: "I enjoyed that event very much, meeting poets from all over Australia, and I felt that this was where I wanted to be."
The focus of his PhD is poetry and semiotics (the study of signs), with the poems on Croakey forming part of his creative project component.
"My creative project is about finding new ways to write, by becoming more conscious of certain aspects of language and the writing process," he said.
"I liked the health connection because the word semiotics evolved from medical terminology and was concerned with diagnosis: signs of ill health."
Mr Bullock has published a collection of poetry, two books of haiku and a novella. He has also edited a number of journals and anthologies and taught students of all ages.
"Poetry has the capacity to fulfil many social roles; I'm interested in extending that in my own writing. I like to write in many voices and sometimes using different personas, too."
An extract from recognition by Owen Bullock
Read in full
this story
of 40,000 years
of a people
the first
(who isolated a pigment
for painting, that highest attainment
of civilisation)
it was never
terra nullius
and what of
the next generation?
they want to live
in a better world