Patrick Martin
Patrick Martin was born in Central Western NSW in 1947. At age 3 his mother died from End Stage Kidney Disease and he was bought up by his three elder sisters, meaning his childhood was disrupted. Patrick moved to Sydney when he was sixteen, after his father died, and lived on the streets, in the parks and homeless shelters until he got work with a plumbing wholesaler and moved into a boarding house. Patrick doesn’t remember a time when he didn’t write poetry, often on the insides of torn cigarette packets, bits of paper he found in the parks or hand towels when he could find some. Patrick says “Poetry saved my life...no matter how black things got poetry always helped me find my light.”
See Pat's complete contribution to Village Voices below:
A House
What is it?
This house, I call 'Alone'.
Where I'm not on my own
Walls painted with words,
floor wet with ink,
ideas and verse left to die
beside the sink.
A house of joy and fear.
This battlefield of a sort
where over the years
my demons and I have fought.
A house where no noe comes,
but all are there.
A house where I endure,
but I cannot bear
A house of pain
yet I return here,
again and again
looking through the window
watching the world go by
Just myself, me and I.