(Australian pictures  by Brent Miller)

Ross Mabey is a poet and lyricist and was living in London when he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease (PD) in November 2005. He returned to Australia in June 2014 with his wife Linda. Their son Jonathon 28 years old, had returned to Australia in 2012.

Ross told Frost Magazine:

My love of poetry dates back to my school days in Australia. In the late 1940’s and early 1950’s, the names of Australian poets were familiar in nearly every Australian household. Poets such as, Mary Gilmore, Adam Lindsay Gordon, Henry Kendall, Henry Lawson. These poets helped capture and shape the unique character of Australians of that time. Never underestimate the deep love of poetry in the Australian psyche.

In particular, poets were inspired by this light filled spacious country, and the unique characters that lived here. The wonderful Dorethea Mackellar expressed such a sentiment in “My Country”: “I love a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains. Of ragged mountain ranges, of droughts and flooding rains.” Andrew Barton (Banjo) Paterson in his poem “The Man From Snowy River”, speaks of a fearless character and his horse who without hesitation pursued wild horses down a steep mountainside, to finally round them up.

My love of poetry was rekindled in 1970’s when I joined a religious teaching, with a focus on creative/imaginative techniques to help individuals to understand life. However, it wasn’t until a few months after I had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease (PD) in November 2005 at the age of 63 that I had a strong desire to write poetry and lyrics for songs.

Was it the shock of diagnosis, or the medication? Whatever it was, it wasn’t the moment to sit back and feel sorry for myself. I knew that if I wanted the rest of my life to be an interesting and productive experience, I must start creating the life that I wanted. I knew that part of the answer for me was to write lyrics for country songs, but how would I do that? And why country songs ? They were my favourite song genre, but I felt they needed a fresh approach.

Not being a musician and having little idea of how to write or structure these lyrics, I started to search the Internet looking for the answers. Eventually I emailed Jeffrey Ullsperger from Wisconsin in the US. He had experience in editing and co-writing country song lyrics. He also had a couple of songs published. Jeffrey agreed to mentor me in how to “craft” the lyrics for these songs.

So 2006 brought a co-writing partnership. To date we have over 40 song “demos” produced and co-written the lyrics to other songs as well. The genre’s we write in now include Contemporary Country, Folk, Pop and the Blues. Several of our songs were entered in the UK Songwriting Contest over several years, and were rated  in the “Semi-finalist” category.

So how did this experience benefit me with regards to life in general and the PD symptoms that I have?

Without a creative interest of some kind, words like isolation, frustration and loneliness come to mind. Words like interaction, satisfaction, confidence and fulfilment were outcomes that were more appealing to me.

I am very grateful to Australia, for its beauty, co-writer Jeffrey Ullsperger for his patience, tolerance, kindness and help in this endeavour while suffering from his own health problems. Also, my gratitude goes to my wife, son, other family members, friends and many others for their love, understanding and support.

We will be featuring two poems by Ross Mabey soon.