Sarah Holland-Batt: Passion for poetry matched by passion for living her best life

From ripping off bush ballads in primary school to receiving the 2016 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for poetry, Sarah Holland-Batt says her spark for poetry was lit in high school.

Poet Sarah Holland-Batt. Picture: John Feder

From ripping off bush ballads in primary school to receiving the 2016 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for poetry, multi award-winning poet Sarah Holland-Batt says her spark for poetry was lit in high school.

“My first memory of writing a poem was in primary school and it was a sort of slight rip-off of a bush ballad set in an environment that I’d never actually been to, like a dusty pub,” she said.

“My first moment of trying to write anything meaningful was in high school. I was very lucky to have a really amazing English teacher … without whom I don’t know that I would have become a writer or a poet.

“It’s extraordinary those little encounters you have with people whose passion carries over to you.”

Holland-Batt’s incredible contribution to Australian literature is the reason she has ­received a nomination for The Australian’s Australian of the Year.

Holland-Batt now shares her passion for poetry and writing as a professor in the Queensland University of Technology creative writing faculty.

She has published three highly acclaimed books of poetry, Aria (2008), The Hazards (2015), and The Jaguar (2022).

The Hazards won her the 2016 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Poetry, and her most recent book, The Jaguar, received the 2023 Stella Prize, the 2023 Margaret and Colin Roderick Literary Award and the 2023 Queensland Premier’s Award for State Significance. It was also named The Australian’s 2022 Book of the Year.

Her third book delves into her personal experience of grief following her father’s death in 2020 from Parkinson’s.

This experience inspired Holland-Batt to become an advocate for aged-care reform, after her father experienced terrible maltreatment in care.

“This is a conversation I think we would like to turn away from, because it’s very confronting, the idea that older people aren’t getting dignified care, it’s not something people want to dwell on,” she said.

“I’m hoping to engage in quite a sustained way with the new draft Aged Care Act, which will be moving through this year.”

Despite her many awards and achievements, Holland-Batt said a life well lived is not measured by such things. “My dad had a miserable start in life, his father was killed in World War Two and he grew up with an alcoholic mother (and) was later taken away from her and sent to boarding school,” she said.

“When he became an adult, he really decided to determine his own path … he lived a life animated by his passions.

“It’s less about material goods or what you’re able to achieve, or what it says on your CV, it’s just about; have you enjoyed your life? Have you filled it with the people that you love? I think that’s probably the crux of it.”

Holland-Batt is working on nonfiction book and is in the early stages of crafting some new poems, but could not share any further details due her closely held philosophy on writing.

“I hate to sound mysterious, but I believe the more you talk about a book, the less powerful the idea becomes,” she said.

We encourage our readers to put in a nomination for The Australian’s Australian of the Year, which was first won in 1971 by economist HC “Nugget” Coombs. Prominent Australians can be nominated by filling out the form above, or sending an email to [e-mail]. Nominations close on Friday, January 19.