Working with her partner to turn their historic home into a gallery, poet and artist Initially NO tells Benjamin Millar she has found her spirit, spark and soul-mate in Seddon.
What are your creative practices and where do you draw inspiration?
I just get a powerful inner ethereal urge to aesthetically create – it’s an emerging form from my poetic imagination that bubbles up and just speaks to me. It’s very spontaneous! The feelings are so strong, I founded this as the Melbourne Sagacious-Art Movement.
What’s your connection to Seddon/Maribyrnong and how did you come to live in the area?
I have been convening West Word Poetry sessions at the Dancing Dog Café for some years (every second and fourth Sunday of the month from 2pm), only two blocks away from our gallery where we now also live. Incredibly, four years ago I met my partner, Glenn Floyd, at another poetry venue and we immediately fell deeply in love. He’s my soul-mate.
What do you love most about living in the area?
Seddon is an exquisite little village – it’s the artistic centre of the universe where highly creative people from all works of life congregate to build and grow and commune with each other in an exciting, artistic, inspiring atmosphere.
What’s your fondest memory of living in the area?
Meeting Glenn! He’s adorable! And highly creative. We are both deeply committed social activists. We both write, play music, paint, and produce poetry. I play the trumpet and guitar, and Glenn built his own beautiful acoustic guitar in Tuscany, Italy. He inspired me to write this poem:
In unison or shadows
Of coloured lights we say
This to each other
And yes guess what next?
Another way of saying
I love you, we invent.
So many ways together
We say those words
In metaphors, allusions, similes,
And euphemisms, we say
I am in love,
So totally into that stream
So cool and waving
With a gentle breeze
And flow from the mountain.
I am in that waterfall
Feeling it cascade around;
You are the water
Soaking me in your essence.
How does living in the area come through in your creative work?
It’s amazing – I have been living here for four years and I feel like it’s been 40. I have never been so prolific in creating.
What’s your favourite local café, eatery or watering hole?
We just adore the Seddon Village café strip, in particular Alfa Café at 97 Victoria Street, the newest. We’re in there all the time – it’s such a creative space.
The Longbourn Gallery, 84 Albert Street, Seddon, is open 8am-6pm daily.
