“It’s an absolute blessing”: Scott-Patrick Mitchell on writing poetry to heal

Stories
Jul 26, 2024
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Scott-Patrick Mitchell signing copies of Clean at the 2023 PMLAs

West Australian poet Scott-Patrick Mitchell’s debut collection Clean was shortlisted for the 2023 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards (PMLAs), an experience they say was “really surreal”. We spoke to Scott-Patrick about the collection, which explores their lived experience of addiction and recovery, about writing to heal and process grief, and what’s happening next for them.

Scott-Patrick said it felt “audacious” to submit their debut poetry collection to the PMLAs, but they also “had an instinct that it was really important” to enter – an instinct that was validated with a spot on the shortlist.

“I remember telling my mum,” Scott-Patrick said, “and my mum saying, ‘Oh, I hope it isn’t a hoax’. It was incredibly humbling and it’s something that you hope for, but you try not to expect.”


Clean has also been recognised in the shortlists for the WA Premier’s Book Awards 2023 (Book of the Year) and Victorian Premier’s Awards 2022 (Poetry), nominations that Scott-Patrick says, “feels as though they’re a step towards acknowledging this greater cultural issue.”

The original impetus for writing the collection, encouraged by their counsellors, was to rework poetry journaled during their methamphetamine addiction and start the healing process.

“I wrote Clean as a way of creating a moment in time for myself to remember my own journey,” Scott-Patrick says. “Reading back through it at times, I can see the strength and the passion and the vulnerability…

“Even though a lot of the poems I wrote [in addiction] were very noisy, there were some that my brain would go back to because they had this itch to them. They were the ones that predominantly ended up in Clean because they were the ones saying, ‘Hey, we know you’ve been through all of this. We know that you’re doing this work now to get clean, but we have value. We are important. We tell a story. We’re painful, we’re harrowing (which is a term that’s been used a lot for this collection) but we’re important’. They were the poems that I went back to salvage.”

Aside from critical acclaim, the most affirming outcome of Clean’s publication, for Scott-Patrick, has been reader messages of recognition and empathy.

“The most moving messages that I’ve received have been from people who have said that they’ve been struggling with addiction, and it’s suggested to them that it is possible to get clean. Quite a few people reached out and said that they’ve passed on the collection to other people in the hope that it resonates with them.”

Scott-Patrick hopes that the collection’s message will connect with future readers, “so that they can just see that it’s possible. Having been through that experience and having the courage to talk about it, then having it recognised in the ways that it has been recognised, that has been really affirming.”

Along with helping to heal scars of the past, Scott-Patrick said that writing Clean – especially poems like Maternal Memories and Ingredients for Grief – also helped to anticipate and heal the inevitability of future grief.

“Once I got clean and sober,” they said. “I realised a great deal of time had passed – reconnecting with my mum, realising that she was suddenly an old lady… I lost my sister to cancer in 2012, so I’ve been very familiar with this sense of grief that you carry with you. It becomes this really interesting, weird, uncomfortable space. I wanted to lean into it and explore different dynamics of loss without having the loss there – the mind races, we are always moving forward and racing towards the end… It allows me to understand what it is that I have to carry when the moment occurs.”

Scott-Patrick has also written a novel about their experiences of addiction, and their entry for the 68th Blake Poetry Prize in 2024, An Addict’s Benediction, was Highly Commended.

“Clean only really captured an aspect of that whole experience. It is an incredibly vast, nuanced experience. It’s a very vast topic/moment of my life, so I’m still drawing on it in different aspects, because there are aspects for me that still need to be explored, to be spoken, to be healed. And there’s ways to draw on it to talk about topics that are relevant to now as well.”

Currently, they are at work on a poetry collection exploring the concepts and history of LGBTQIA+ activism, as well as continuing work from their 2022 Red Room Poetry Fellowship. For the Fellowship, Scott-Patrick walked 68 kilometres of coastline around Perth to explore ideas about both Perth Canyon’s submerged ecosystem, and homelessness in car parks along the coast – “the fragility between those two unseen worlds.”

Doing a long-distance hike for research fits with Scott-Patrick’s modus operandi of putting themselves through extreme experiences to inspire and harness their art. In 2015, they performed improvised slam poetry for 24 hours onstage for the ‘24 HOUR PERFORMANCE POEM’.

“It was this really magical experience… I can now get on stage and improvise and perform off the top of my head,” they said.

“I really enjoy endurance art. Having gone through addiction, which in and of itself is a form of endurance art, I like this idea of being in the space and subjecting yourself to pushing through.”

Speaking of magical experiences, when asked at the PMLAs about what it felt like to have an emotional effect upon readers, Scott-Patrick said, “[I feel] immensely proud to be able to convey such a personal lived experience in such a way and for it to connect with people…

“It’s just that real pride and emotion and being able to remind your teenage self that it gets dark – it gets really, really dark – but because of your drive, because of your passion, you stick with it and you achieve this remarkable thing. It’s unlike anything else I’ve ever really experienced before, which is brilliant. It’s a blessing, absolute blessing.”

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