Annus Poeticus

On our hobby farm on the edge of the Monaro, my husband Matthew and I raise children (I have eight, though only five remain at home), sheep, goats, chooks, pigs, a milking cow, fruit and vegies. To support this enterprise I am a teacher at the remotest school in Victoria (if anywhere in Victoria is truly remote). In 2015, I set myself the challenge of composing a poem each day for the calendar year, so I wrote 365 poems in 365 days. Now four years on, what to do with this collection which at that time was such an important way of chronicling my life? My husband suggested that I do a cull and make a collection of the better poems. He went through and graded them (because he is also a teacher), giving an arbitrary score from A to C. These are the As.