Why do I write?

By Ian | 23 June, 2011

When I was 20, I had the urgent need to self-publish a small collection of poems. There was no monetary, or pressure from anybody - it just came from somewhere.

So I spent several days writing poems.

As I was not a prolific writer, it took more time than expected and in the end I was writing any old crap just to get enough pages together to finish the collection.

Of course it all had to be typed up, which was an act in itself.

In those day there was no online publishing, so I made a couple of covers and proudly presented the typed up collection to my girlfriend. She thought I was nuts.

I have often wondered why I did it and where that external need came from.

Later I discovered that my grandfather, Mothers side, was a writer.

His name was Frank Richard Beasley.

My Mom told me that her father was an intellectual and used to write articles for magazines, short stories and sometimes wrote under a pseudonym. He used to have piles of books stacked up on the floor and used to buy glossy mags like House and Country, and other stuff (although they couldn’t afford it).

Of course if he was writing intellectual stuff, he would need (expensive) intellectual material and perhaps spend a lot of time in libraries. That would also account for having the piles of books on the floor.

I did some searching around the internet and found an article from Frank R. Beasley in the Foreign Affairs, “Problems of Federation in Australia”. Vol 13. Jan 1935, so he would have been 25 years old.

Is that my Grandfather I ask?

He had an engineering background, but of course in those days, you studied to earn money.

I didn’t find any other references to him.

Is that where my drive is coming from?

He also fell in love with a German woman whilst serving in Germany. When separated, they wrote in German to each other. I wonder how many poems he wrote for her? In German?