Picture: AMELIA PEPE
COMMUNITY members in Penola gathered at the town’s Poets’ Corner last week to mark the launch of Penola District Cultural Fund’s John Shaw Neilson bronze sculpture appeal.
In recognition and remembrance of the Penola poet, fundraising has begun for a bust worth $16,000 to be on permanent display in the town.
Adelaide sculptor Judith Rolevink has designed the bust of the Penola-born poet.
Donations can now be made at the Penola Bendigo Bank to make the vision a reality and more information is available at the town’s visitor information centre.
After attending a 1998 John Dowie workshop, Ms Rolevink studied sculpture for three years at the Adelaide Centre for Arts, then held her first solo exhibition in 2006.
This led Ms Rolevink to being commissioned to sculpt the statue of Mary Mackillop for St Francis Xavier Cathederal in 2009.
“When sculpting John Shaw Neilson, I began to read all I could about the poet and his life to give me a feeling of his presence,” Ms Rolevink said.
“I then cleared my plate of all else and begun work on his bust.”
Attending the launch of the appeal was Neilson’s distant relative Andrew Jackman.
“I would like to congratulate the cultural fund, they have put Penola on the map by acknowledging writers and poets who have lived their days here or were born in the town,” Mr Jackman said.
“It has really enriched Penola.”
He described Neilson as an inspiring poet who lived a pretty hard life as he’s family was not wealthy.
“He and his family endured the hardships so may people encountered in pioneering days and it is probably one of the things that inspired him so greatly,” Mr Jackman said.
“He enriched readers of his work and it is fantastic that his poetry is being kept alive today.”
As part of the launch, a new plaque erected in the Poets’ Corner was also unveiled in honour of Adam Lindsay Gordon bust sculptor, Kathleen Scott.
Member of the Gordon Bust Fundraising Committee Lois Hodge did the honours of unveiling the latest addition.
“Thank you to the cultural trust as if it was not for them, we would not have had the opportunity to meet so many interesting people, we are very fortunate for group,” Ms Hodge said.
“This lady is truly amazing and it gives me great pleasure to unveil the plaque here today.”
As a nod to Ms Scott’s Scottish heritage, a tartan cloth was placed in front of her plaque in preparation for the highly anticipated unveiling.
Born Kathleen Bruce and related to the Scottish king Robert the Bruce, Kathleen was the eleventh child of an English country parson.
She married Captain Robert Falcon Scott in 1908 and after his death in the Antarctic, worked in London as a professional sculptor and assisted in plastic surgery rebuilding the battle-damaged faces of wounded soldiers.
In 1922 she married the politician Edward Hilton Young, later Lord Kennet and enjoyed a wide circle of friends, including prime ministers Herbert Asquith, Lloyd George, Stanley Baldwin, Neville Chamberlain and Stanley Bruce, the explorer Fridtjof Nansen and playwright George Bernard Shaw.
She sculpted many of them and her work is represented in Westminster Abbey, the National Portrait Gallery, Tate Gallery, and Imperial War Museum in London.
Her marble sculpture of Adam Lindsay Gordon was unveiled in Poets’ Corner by the Duke of York, later King George VI, in 1934 and the dean at the time considered it to be “the best bust in the Abbey”.
