Pioneering Over Four Epochs

An Interview with Ron Price

Ron Price was born in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada in 1944. He received his primary and secondary education in Burlington Ontario, went to McMaster and Windsor Universities where he got a BA and a B.Ed.in 1966 and 1967, respectively. In 1971, at the age of 27, he went to live in Australia with his first wife. He continued his education in Australia in several post-graduate studies programs. He also continued teaching: first at primary, then secondary and then at many post-secondary educational institutions. At the age of forty, while living in the Northern Territory and working as an Adult Educator, he started to write. By the time he was fifty he was writing poetry, almost exclusively. By then he was living in Perth, Western Australia. His second wife is a Tasmanian. They have raised three children. He became a member of the Baha’i Faith in 1959. He gave the following interview in Perth Western Australia after he had been writing poetry seriously for four years(1992-1995). When we caught up with him, he had just finished his twenty-fifth year working as a teacher/lecturer and was enjoying a summer holiday at his home in Perth.

Questioner(Q): Why did you put this booklet together for the Collis Featherstone Teaching Project.

Price: I have been writing poetry extensively for about four years now. In the summer months, beginning toward the end of November, I have time from my job as a lecturer in a Tafe College to write more frequently than normal. I send copies of the poetry to the Baha’i World Centre Library. The Collis Featherstone Teacing Project(CFTP) started on 24 November so I thought I’d put together all the poetry I wrote from that date until a point near the end of phase one. The poetry is not about the CFTP. Many of the themes relate to the work of the Project. Much of the poetry is autobiographical. I have sent it along to the LSA of South Perth under whose auspices the Project is taking place. It is sent in appreciation for all the work done by the Project organizers.

Q: What do you think of the CFTP?

Price: The degree of organization, viewed from a distance, is impressive. I have not been that involved myself. I gave blood and my wife helped in a letterbox drop. Most of the Baha’i friends in Belmont helped out in one way or another in some aspect of the program. This was the impression I got as the secretary of the Belmont Assembly. The Project certainly provided an opportunity for Baha’is to participate in an organized program. While all this was going on, of course, most Baha’is carried on with their own teaching work, making the overall campaign of teaching in the summer of 1995/6 the most impressive in the history of the Cause in Western Australia. In addressing one of the conferences that launched the CFTP, Padma Wong referred to ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s words when He laid the foundation stone for the Mother Temple of the West: the temple is already built. Entry by troops is a reality not yet experienced in the world of the senses. ‘Abdu’l-Baha always found all the barriers removed even if we don’t. He found this in 1912 in Montreal. The hearts were “in the utmost state of receptivity.” I’m sure He would find the same today, even if we do not.

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(Q) Could you tell us a little about your writing? Do you consider yourself part of any literary group or tradition? What would you regard as the major literary influences on what you write?

Price: Off the cuff that is a difficult question to answer. It is difficult because the answer is complex. I can’t simply say that my poetry, for that is mostly what I write, is of this or that school, this or that tradition. I came to poetry quite late. I don’t think I even started to think of myself as a poet until I was nearly fifty. My background was the social sciences. I graduated in sociology; all my post-graduate work was in some one or other of the social sciences. From 1974 to 1994 I read mostly social sciences, say five to ten books a week on average. About 1990, in my mid-forties I began to read about poetry. My poetic sensibilities had been awakened by Roger White, a Canadian poet, whom I started reading in 1980. Between 1992 and 1995 I wrote nearly twenty-five hundred poems. Frankly, I don’t think of my poetry in terms of an association with any particular genre of poetry. The influences on my poetry are significantly the books I am reading at any one time. Since, say, 1990 I have been scanning and occasionally reading between fifteen and twenty books a week: books about writing, about poetry, writers, literature, reading, interdisciplinary studies in literature and the arts, a veritable cornucopia of material. All my poems have short introductions and these introductions are indicative of some of the influences, poetic and otherwise, that are operating at the time a particular poem is written.

Q: What about the human influences, the affect of people, on what you write? Is it as great as books which obviously have quite a significant impact from what you say?

Price: Many of my poems are the result of experiences I have with my colleagues and students at work. I lecture in the social sciences and humanities at the West Australian Department of Training. I am also very committed to the Baha’i Faith and this commitment brings me into contact with many different kinds of people and situations. These generate another group of poems, as does my family and friends. My poetry is very autobiographical and I often will write a poem about someone whom I knew many years ago, my mother or father, say. And then, this may sound strange to you, but I like to think of, and I certainly believe in, the influences on my poetry from those who have gone on to another world. This is a much more subtle, more intangible, process; but it is certainly a human influence I can not discard because I am often conscious of it. Just exactly how this influence takes place I do not know or understand.