Republishing: Thirty Years Later

by Jayne M. – February 10, 2018

I decided to republish the poetry with the same title in 2018.

Initially the reason for the same title was to keep the consistency for the second edition.

The decision to republish came to me while I was living in Alice Springs N.T. Australia’s desert heart in 2016.  Alice Springs weaves its own magic around song lines and spoken word so in retrospect it was no surprise it happened there..

One day on a tourist trip to the largest red rock in Australia I took a classic picture of Uluru.  I put it on my Jaynee facebook page and it sat there for weeks. As I was beginning to consider adding my poetry to the page I decided to write one to go with the photo I had taken. I was genuinely surprised at the response to the Uluru poem I read out at “dirty word” venue one spoken word night held at Totem Theatre. Around that time unbeknown to me it was the conversation time for the “statement” a convention being held in Uluru to bring aboriginal affairs into the Australian Constitution.

When I read my Uluru poem to the audience at Totem and learned of the coincidental events happening at Uluru at the same time I was in shock.
Since then I have reread and dedicated many of my earlier poems to current events.

I began to realise that “Visions” ..”of a new kind” added a whole other meaning to my poetry. From there on in republication of the old book began to transform into a new and updated edition with the same title.

I began to understand my uncanny ability as a storyteller to tune into current and future events beyond my limited understanding at the time. It was a revolutionary step beyond the boundaries that I had set for myself all those years ago.  In the new edition I re titled many of the original poems to reflect the events we are now experiencing on the planet as can be seen in the “Vision of the Refugee Crisis”.

All of this I never thought possible for a mere poet. These days I leave the new poetry book to have a life of its own and a power to speak to people the way the poems spoke to me initially… in the shower driving down the road in the middle of the night on the toilet.. Collected and kept under my bed or in the closet in an old suitcase until now.