CAREER CHANGE: Colin Patterson went from farming to poetry. All his works are now about to be publishedCHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand (Stuff.co.nz), November 8, 2007:
Colin Patterson spent hours making up poems and stories in his head as he sat on his tractor cultivating paddocks on his Leeston farm.
"Now and again something inspired me to put poetic stories together," Patterson said yesterday. "They are quite unique. Some move people to tears while others are hilarious."
He never wrote them down but "stored" them deep in his memory until at the age of 60 his daughter gave him a book for his birthday and urged him to write down the stories and poems that had entertained her and her two sisters and brother over the years.
Patterson whiled away the long winter nights jotting down his poems only realising he had a winner when he took out the top poetry prize at the Christchurch Writers' Festival.
"All of a sudden all those poems I cobbled together in the tractor cab were a marketable product," said Patterson who after his success began getting requests to perform some of his works at symposiums and charity concerts.
Dressed up in his oilskin jacket and hat and with manuka stick in hand, Patterson took his works from the paddock to the stage.
"I kind of paint a picture that leads into the poem," he said.
One of his first works was inspired by a winning painting he saw at an art exhibition while on a trip to the Royal Sydney Show.
He transferred his frustrations about the art work into a poem about a Canterbury high country farmer travelling to the Christchurch Art Gallery to view a winning painting and who left wondering why he had bothered.
Eight years on from being urged to put pen to paper, Patterson's works are about to be published in a book called From Patterson Heart.
But Patterson's transformation from farmer to poet hit a glitch when he was diagnosed as having pancreatic cancer.
His illness inspired him to get his nephew to capture a "wee bit of me" on film at a charity concert so his grandchildren had something to remember their old granddad with. By chance there was a "chap" there with full film equipment.
"I bowled up to him and said `things are not looking too good for me' and he offered to come and see me the next day," said Patterson. The pair made a DVD which they filmed at various locations in and around Leeston and Christchurch. But as it turned out Patterson's days were far from over.
After several biopsies and a blood test analysed in England surgeons told him he definitely did not have cancer and that the tumour had been caused by his own immune system attacking his pancreas.
© Fairfax New Zealand Limited 2007.
