Martin Christmas has a Master of Arts degree in Cultural Studies and is an Adelaide performance poet and photographer. He wrote his first poem at high school but channeled his artistic endeavors into theatre directing and teaching drama in schools as a freelance artist, The ESP Travelling Showman. For more than 40 years he was a closet poet with only one poem (published in 1995) in Redoubt (Canberra University Press).
In 2010 he came close to trashing all his poems, but kept a small core, and in 2011 he read his first poem publicly at Friendly Street Poets. In 2012, he was a FSP mentored poet. His mentor, Jules Leigh Koch, encouraged him to push on.
In 2012 his poem The Sadness of Stained Glass Faces was published in Light and Glorie (Pantaenuspress) and subsequently was read by him on ABC National on Christmas Day.
He regularly reads at Friendly Street, Gawler Poets @ the Pub and other poetry events around Adelaide. In 2013 he was artistic director of the War Poets event staged by North Eastern Writers as part of the Tee Tree Gully Poetry Festival. He has been a FSP guest poet at the SA State Library, the Woodville Civic Centre Library, and at Lee Marvin Readings (Australian Experimental Arts Foundation) co-ordinated by Ken Bolton. He runs poetry presentation workshops for other poets.
In 2015 he was FSP Poet of the Month; will run a poetry presentation workshop as part of the Gawler Festival of Words; and will be guest poet at Poets Roundabout Blackwood.
He is an avid poster of poetry on Facebook; an encourager of new poets; and the FSP event photographer.
Small Life Force Voyager
Suddenly aware
of a small moth
beating its Magellan journey
through lounge room space
just in front of
my gesticulating finger.
So near and steady
beside my now stilled finger
as to be a satellite
around a huge planet
that easily could have seized it up
had I not been transfixed
by this small life force voyager
claiming the Universe of space
that stretched around it.
Magellan and Columbus
Gagarin, Shepherd, Armstrong.
Mariner and Voyager,
beginning acts of faith.
We are all that small life force voyager
fluttering our fragile wings
through the vast uncharted
Universe of Life.
From Friendly Street Poets 38