ABOUT THE POET
I am a communications professional based in Northern Tasmania. I have spent much of my working life telling other people’s stories. Poetry gives me a different space to explore identity and the ways ordinary moments accumulate meaning over time.
ABOUT THE PIECE
The Language of Wax uses a candle as a metaphor for a human life. The flame represents the living self, experiencing each moment as the present. The wax records time, reshaped by childhood, family, ageing, loss and memory.
Moving from morning to evening, the poem mirrors birth to death. Domestic scenes become dreamlike landscapes as the wax gathers the stories and voices of a lifetime. Its reference to Plato’s cave reflects how inherited ideas shape our earliest understanding of the world.
The poem is intended to unfold differently on rereading as the candle changes shape.