Rupert McCall takes a path less-travelled

Not many people can remember the first poem they read, but Rupert McCall can and he reckons it changed his life.

Rupert McCall’s love of poetry was born at primary school. Picture Dominika Lis

DISCOVERING the magic of Banjo Paterson at a little school in Woody Point opened up a young Rupert McCall’s mind to a poetic rhythm that now beats in time with his heart.

It was 1980 and his Year 5 class at Our Lady of Lourdes Primary School was learning Paterson’s A Bush Christening.

“I suppose it was the first contact with Australian poetry as far as I can remember,” Rupert explains.

“I just thought that it was a pretty cool way of telling a story. It had the rhythm, it had a little bit of larrikinism, laughter. For me, it was like a jigsaw puzzle of words and putting the words together in a clever kind of way that ultimately came together and told a story.

“It became scratched into my psyche and opened my eyes to that side of Australian life. You were in your own little bubble on the Redcliffe Peninsula and you read the poetry of Banjo Patterson and Henry Lawson and it opened your eyes and your heart to the country that we call home. It became part of a rhythm that I could feel and then when I started writing my own stuff it was very influential.”

Rupert McCall school photo.

The following year, Rupert wrote his first poem – a tribute to trees which earned him a highly commended in an Arbor Day poetry competition and gave him the confidence to keep writing.

The sports-mad youngster wasn’t a big reader at that time, spending every spare moment in the backyard with his brothers Brett and Steve and looking forward to watching his heroes at Dolphin Oval every second Sunday.

“I talk about this beautiful collision of what happened in that year, 1980, when I was in Grade 5 and was introduced to Banjo Patterson at the same time Arty Beetson was leading Queensland out of the sheds at Lang Park as it was for the first State of Origin match,” Rupert explains.

“I knew Arty was a Redcliffe boy and the next year he came back to Redcliffe to play for the Dolphins. But all that kind of stuff it was swirling around in the passionate recesses of my mind and so I started combining that want to be creative with that great passion for sport. I think something developed in an artistic sense that way.”

He finished school, went on to study law at university and landed a job with a Brisbane law firm as an articled clerk, but a yearning to be creative continued to grow.

Rupert wrote tributes to mates for their 21st birthdays and was soon noticed by those outside his circle of friends and family.

“Triple M (radio station) had a competition where you had to send your supporter fax in to support the Brisbane Broncos in their first season. I wrote a poem and Rod Tiley read it out on Triple M as the winner,” Rupert recalls.

“I won 12 tickets to a home game – it went better than the ode to trees! I got the first prize for that one, and I thought life couldn’t get much better than that.”

Poet, Rupert McCall at home. Picture: Mark Calleja

Rupert juggled life as an articled clerk and part-time poet, often writing while he was waiting for his number to be called to file documents in court.

“You had to occupy that time, so I started writing the poems that would form that first chapter of my professional life,” he says.

“The first book was Rhymes, Idols and Shenanigans in 1993 and for the year or two before that I was paying tribute to Queensland State of Origin teams and heroes like Ian Healy and Dawn Fraser.

“I remember they wrote an article in Rugby League Week and they printed my poem Queenslander but didn’t put my name to it and said it had been written by one of the Queensland Rugby League players.

“There was all this mystery about where this poetry was coming from, so I rang (editor) Tony Durkin and said, ‘listen, that wasn’t written by Mal Meninga, I wrote it’. He did a story on me in the next edition.”

Before too long, Rupert was ducking off to appear at events in his lunch break and he realised he needed to make a choice.

“It was this snowball rolling down the hill. I self-published Rhymes, Idols and Shenanigans and then a year later I did Slops, Props and Goosestep Flavoured Lifesavers, but in between I had retired from the law and was determined to have a crack at making it on the road less-travelled as a full-time poet.”

Since then, he’s overcome shyness to perfect his delivery and has developed a craft that melds a rhythm, rhyme and style that’s simply Rupert McCall.

State of Origin at Suncorp Stadium, Adam Mogg gets a hug from poet Rupert McCall and mate Jon Sloan.

He’s honoured his heroes on and off the sporting field, and travelled the world making audiences laugh and cry.

“It’s the full circle. When you’ve had the honour and you’re humbled to speak at the funeral of one of your heroes, I’m thinking of (Redcliffe Dolphins’) Peter Leis, that’s really hard to describe. You’ve come the full circle and it’s as honourable as anything could be,” Rupert says.

“Maybe that’s symbolic of the against-the-odds story of the lawyer turned poet whose work took him across the country and around the world.”

For him, career highlights have been reciting his poem A Firefighter’s Dream during a Ground Zero ceremony in New York on September 11, 2010, and reciting 90 Years Ago at Anzac Cove on the 90th anniversary of the landings at Gallipoli.

“It’s just very special and it’s something that changes the course of your life a bit. It puts you on a different wave. Thinking about everything, that’s certainly at the top and Anzac Cove is up there with it,” Rupert says.

“In terms of sporting pieces, reciting to a corporate tennis event in America with Andre Agassi and Bill Gates in the audience that was a bit of a spin out. I remember thinking as I was standing up there looking out at all these legends and billionaires, that it only just seems like yesterday that I was collecting aluminium cans at Dolphin Oval.”

Poet Rupert McCall grew up in Redcliffe and has gone one to be a highly-regarded poet, author and public speaker. Picture: Sarah Keayes

Rupert’s favourite poem is More than a Horse, the verse he wrote about the people’s racehorse and underdog Super Impose.

“It was a first offering, a pretty standard verse structure tribute to this horse that used to win against the odds. It’s the horse that came from last, down the outside, to win races.

“The jockey Darren Beadman would say that there were all these horses in the race but when the crowd roared, Super Impose knew they were roaring for him, he just knew it and picked up a gear. 

The kid from Redcliffe has no idea how many poems he’s written since he took that leap of faith, but his sixth book is out now.

It’s called Golden Soil and is a compilation of his best-known work.

Visit rupertmccall.com.au for details