Millgrove resident Tass Holmes recieved top honours at the annual Woorilla Poetry Prize. 31547
By Monique Ebrington
MILLGROVE resident Tass Holmes has been passionate about poetry since she was a child.
A re-worked poem on love, which she wrote in her youth, won her the annual Woorilla Poetry Prize under the category of Yarra Ranges/Cardinia Shire resident.
It’s the first time Ms Holmes has entered the competition and said she was surprised for judges to name her piece Home was a Long Way as the Winner and poems I’ll Live and Back Home from Hospital as Highly Commended.
Ms Holmes said she wrote the first finished draft of the winning poem when she was 19 years old and developed it as her view on love matured.
“I wrote the first draft on a working trip, about a boyfriend I had at the time,” Ms Holmes said.
“The more recent draughts reflected my role as a sole parent.
“It’s now more about how you can have a romantic idea about what you want, but it can be a long time before it comes to fruition”.
Ms Holmes is studying her Master’s Degree in Chinese Herbal Medicine and said that poetry was something she enjoyed as a child and fell into the habit of doing as a teenager.
“I’d keep a regular diary as a teenager. It was very introspective of my feelings at the time. There was a lot of poetry,” she said.
“Some of it I can pick little lines out of, for my work now, but most of it was obsessive teenage ravings.”
Her advice for budding poets is to not be deterred by rejection and to write as honestly and clearly as possible.
“I’d say find your own style. Work out what suits you and what feels comfortable to you,” she said.
“Work at the poem until you think it’s as near perfect as you can get it and when you believe your poems are good then that’s when they’re ready to be sent off.”
