Marching with a Broken Shadow by Dyson Russell

I was born in 1995 in a beautiful country town called Rockhampton in Queensland’s north, and lived on a farm until the age of three with my mum and my grandma. In 1998 my mum and I moved to Melbourne where I have lived ever since.

After studying William Blake in year 12 I developed a penchant for writing poetry. Years later this grew into a means of catharsis and self-expression as I cared for my sick mother.

After she passed away in 2017, and I discovered that she too was a writer poetry, I committed myself to the goal of continuing to write; eventually settling on the idea of producing a work that was both thematically linked and conceptually realized. This work is what became known as ‘Marching with a Broken Shadow’.

I would describe the book as a labour of love, one that was crafted through dark times, but that manifested itself into something that aims to capture all that human life and experience has to offer… and with that, I think there shines a subtle optimism that is never truly out of sight.

I am currently writing a follow up work loosely entitled ‘Stories Heard From the Hearts Whisper’