Mother of the Child gives a new perspective, an unfolding of the ways in which the normal becomes unique. Vignettes from a mother’s life reveal memories that are light and dark, joyful and sad, wistful and filled with tension, as if prevaricating between setting sail and staying on the shore. Her hopes, her joys and her struggles are what make her completely individual yet completely representative of the human lot.
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Jill Forster
With a PhD in educational psychology and curriculum, Jill Forster has worked as an independent consultant, university lecturer and secondary school teacher, and has continued to run creative writing workshops and write freelance.
Since completing Mother of the Child, Jill has been collaborating in an art and poetry project, written more than 100 collected poems, and has a set of “short short stories” underway. Her professional articles appear in peer-reviewed journals and research textbooks on the topics of creative thinking and (under) achievement. Her individual poems have been published in collations such as a chapbook (NSW Government Arts Council grant), magazines and online (for the National Library and Royal Botanic Gardens), and her other published writings include the books Think about Creativity, Think about Mentoring, and two poetry books: Lullabies and Honeyed Ramblings. |
Jill Forster on Mother of the Child
Songful time travelling is where I’m taking you in these memoir fragments – a lyrical time warp from last century, floating across then and there to here and now. This collection of moments sifted from my mother’s life – like an old-time movie, as seen through the child’s eyes – has its own timeless messages and one person’s life stands for many. As I hold up my mother’s mirror on her life it is as if broken memory fragments are reflecting the ordinary minutiae. They shine under the spotlight of reminiscence, revealing the extraordinary, and there we have our snapshot, our own painted impressions – like the blue hour of dusk – our own sung poem. They take us away and make us connect with things that ring true. To hear the lyricism in life we might listen out for faraway cadences while we hear the realities of a life as lived: There were plenty of cockatoos screeching in my mother’s life. What she needed was to hear the doves coo. What she did hear every day was a caged canary call. We hear the poetry in the faint whir of a ceiling fan that oscillates with the sounds of family life … we wait for time to reveal another message … we stop what we’re doing just to listen, and to get the drift of days now gone. Hope you enjoy catching the drift. |
Reviews
Jill’s book is a wonderful memoir of her mother, and her use of text and prose brings the personal anecdotes alive. So many of the things she talks about bring my own memories alive and for that I thank her. Life was very different in this time, and yet I relished reading her stories. Our lives are ordinary and yet extraordinary. Thank you, Jill.
Diana Ryall AM, former Managing Director, Apple Australia
Diana Ryall AM, former Managing Director, Apple Australia
When in 1931 Salvadore Dali painted one of the most important works of Surrealism, The Persistence of Memory, he celebrated the wonderful experience of life often warped by time but at the centre of our existence. In Mother of the Child, Jill Forster shares her joy of knowledge through observation and experience, taking us on a journey of discovery that yields so much more than gaining knowledge from a small screen, the supposed font of all wisdom. What a pleasure to share with the author a life crammed with detail of a real and ever intriguing natural world, observations that stimulate her imagination to create and quote verse that integrates so seamlessly with the images of her prose. Put down your screen, read this book and go forth into the world with your eyes wide open, and enjoy.
David Elfick, Australian producer/director, Rabbit-Proof Fence, No Worries and Newsfront,
with over 40 film and TV productions to his credit.
David Elfick, Australian producer/director, Rabbit-Proof Fence, No Worries and Newsfront,
with over 40 film and TV productions to his credit.
Magically compelling, honest and insightful, Mother of the Child takes the reader through a beautiful and authentic journey of an Australian woman’s life from the mid-20th century, so real and resonant that the reader can smell the soup on the stove, hear the cockatoos screeching, taste the sea salt on the beach towels and see the bobby pins on the dressing table. It is at the same time a monument to a life that has filled with love of family, the Australian landscape and life itself, with all of its joy and injustices, balanced beautifully but without undue sentimentality, with timeless poetry, remnants of philosophy and enduring gratefulness for a mother’s gift of life and love. Somewhat unexpectedly, along the way it helps to nurture and heal those who have lost and need to live again.
Kaaren Koomen AM, Director, Governmental & Regulatory Affairs, IBM Australia & New Zealand
Kaaren Koomen AM, Director, Governmental & Regulatory Affairs, IBM Australia & New Zealand
Mother of the Child is a poetic reflection of the wonder and innocence of childhood and an elegy for a simpler time.
Nicki Roller, Deputy Head of Production, SBS
Nicki Roller, Deputy Head of Production, SBS
Part prose, part poetry, part memoir, part conversation with the past, Mother of the Child is Jill Forster’s evocation of her relationship with her mother and her relationship with herself. Think of this as a literary photo album where words replace pictures. What Forster shows us is that every small observation is significant, that there is meaning in everything in this elegiac narrative of a time not quite lost.
Clare Calvet, ABC Radio reviewer for 25 years
Clare Calvet, ABC Radio reviewer for 25 years
An extended and intensely lyrical poem, in prose and verse, as well as being a meditation on childhood memories and the experience of parenting. The unforgotten details of one particular childhood take on universality as they are evoked in richly expressive and rhythmic language, bringing back to life ‘that leap of joy like a fat raisin squelching with buttered glee, drunk on liquid laughter’. While at the end of the book there is sadness, it only comes at the end of a narrative bursting with that buttery, liquid joy.
Jamie Grant, literary critic and author
Jamie Grant, literary critic and author
This book is a series of love letters to the author’s mother and to motherhood; to growing up in Australia and to memory itself. It is superbly written, absorbing the reader instantly in a time and place that is terribly familiar, yet also unique to the author’s experience. The stories are of joy and of terrible grief, but most of all this is a book about love. Love of family, love of nature and place, and most of all the incomparable and unique love a mother provides to her children and the love she receives in return. I heartily recommend this beautiful book.
Verity Firth, Executive Director Social Justice, University of Technology Sydney,
and former New South Wales parliamentarian
Verity Firth, Executive Director Social Justice, University of Technology Sydney,
and former New South Wales parliamentarian
Evocative and surreal and somehow very familiar. This book is a treasure trove of beautifully crafted word paintings. Intriguing descriptions of time and place tumble off the page, each one as cleverly written as the next. This story feels like you’ve lived it yourself, such is the deftness and depth of the writing.
Jenny Morris, singer-songwriter, OAM, MNZM
Jenny Morris, singer-songwriter, OAM, MNZM
The memoir genre is loaded with tellings by survivors of family dysfunction. This one is a love letter. Mother of the Child captures how memory functions as an aspect of the soul. It is a transparent model of the examined life, of family bonds – within and without.
Wayne Grogan, author, Ned Kelly Award winner
Wayne Grogan, author, Ned Kelly Award winner
Jill Forster is a seriously gifted ‘poetic prose’ author who has a mastery of language and expression and literature. This is an extraordinary family memoir, full of historical recollections that took me back to my own childhood.
Gary Martin, publisher, Deep Line Books
Gary Martin, publisher, Deep Line Books
A laser-like focus on things that are not only nostalgia triggers, but are in fact full of symbolism. I particularly liked the way the narrative and the poems fitted together, erudite and deceptively simple. It put me in mind of Tim Winton’s Island Home and the English writer Ted Walker’s The High Path.
Phil Donnelly, poet and critic
Phil Donnelly, poet and critic
Fragments
Out there the cockatoos made you stop and wonder sometimes. Where did they go when they weren’t screeching at the other birds and ripping off the leaves of the mulberry bushes growing over the outhouse. A person can hardly hear anything over their shrieking. They fill up the sky with their noise. |
Resting on succulent leaves, butterfly wings vibrate the air, rippling its reminiscences from one garden to another from back then and now. One day she will want to set sail |
Catharsis in the Cathedral |
Paradise Bird |
Media
RADIO INTERVIEW
One of my radio interviews recently was with Andrew Reynolds on AM981 2NM. It was great to have the opportunity to talk about my book “Mother of the Child” on air and to outline some of the issues that are significant in the book such as giving a say to smaller voices. And along with that the need to focus on and be grateful for the small but special moments in our lives. Here is the link to the interview. |
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THE SENIOR NEWSPAPER
Poet Jill Forster's ode to a mother's love.
by Rowan Cowley, The Senior
"Poet and author Jill Forster's new book uses both poetry and prose to express the indelible mark her mother Heather made on her life.
The book uses recollections, family history and breathtaking lyricism to detail the many ways the mother helped to shape the child.
The book begins with recollections of family summers on the beach in the 1960s.
It explores how Heather helped sew the seeds of Jill's imagination by telling her the foam capped waves were white horses racing towards the shore."
Read the article here.
Poet Jill Forster's ode to a mother's love.
by Rowan Cowley, The Senior
"Poet and author Jill Forster's new book uses both poetry and prose to express the indelible mark her mother Heather made on her life.
The book uses recollections, family history and breathtaking lyricism to detail the many ways the mother helped to shape the child.
The book begins with recollections of family summers on the beach in the 1960s.
It explores how Heather helped sew the seeds of Jill's imagination by telling her the foam capped waves were white horses racing towards the shore."
Read the article here.