Throughout my adult life I have always found it easier / simpler / safer to be my professional me -- do good (never a bad sentiment) and make a contribution; change the world for the better, if you can, where the real world is for you. The personal is political. Be active at that intersection. That's where my head and efforts have been focused for almost fifty years. There have been some successes and many more defeats and delays. But, generally speaking, we've made significant progressive advances. There's a lot left to achieve.
Last September, however, I decided to shift my personal emphasis. Maybe it's simply that I'm older (heading towards seventy). Maybe I was simply 'over it' (but why then would I accept an unsolicited offer to become Co-Chair of the NDIS Reform Advisory Committee?)
The simple fact is I wanted to focus more on some personal priorities that have (for decades) come second which, when one is busy and somewhat effective in the disability non-government sector, truly means last on the priority list (by a long country mile). Writing is what I really want to do more of. So, I changed (it wasn't quite as straightforward as that sounds). I resigned from my job last September and feel no desire to ever again be anyone's employee.
Although, I know one should "never say never again" (to quote from Sean Connery's not-terrible return for one more James Bond film). And you know, some Don Corleone type might make me an offer I couldn't refuse. But I doubt it.
Spike dug out of our garage (Spike's workshop) an old ring-binder of draft poems in December. I set about selecting some, re-working them substantially, and writing some new ones. By mid-January I had completed the first draft of a poetry collection I had started to call Something That Comes Close. I spent the next month editing and re-editing the text -- hours, for example, debating with myself whether to leave in or take out the word "and" at the beginning of a line in a poem called 'Capercaillie'.
Spike drew me six lovely illustrations: including one of a Capercaillie.
Today I received the Author's Proof copy of my first collection of poems. It will be published on Tuesday, 11 March in paperback, on Kindle and on Kobo. I couldn't be happier.
I wrote these words for the "About Us" end pages of the book.
Dougie Herd was born in Glasgow, Scotland. He moved to live and work in Australia some years after becoming a quadriplegic wheelchair user. For health reasons he needed / wanted to live somewhere warm. For most of the last forty years Dougie has worked in Scotland and Australia to promote and extend the human rights of disabled people. We’ve not fully achieved that objective yet. But we’re still making progress. Dougie has always written, as far back as he can remember. Apart from his intermittent blog, however, Something That Comes Close is the first time he has published work of this kind.
And this is true in ways that differ from before. My name is Dougie Herd. I am a writer.
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