Stephen House has won many awards and nominations as a poet, playwright, and actor. He’s had 20 plays produced with many published by Australian Plays Transform. He’s received several international literature residencies from The Australia Council for the Arts, and an Asialink India literature residency. He’s had two chapbooks published by ICOE Press Australia: real and unreal poetry and The Ajoona Guest House monologue. His next book drops soon. He performs his acclaimed monologues widely. Stephen’s play, Johnny Chico has been running in Spain for 4 years.
dawn
it was what i needed
in my current darkness
the dawn sunlight
rising behind tree
restoring me lost
in a fragile ebb
of belief and happy
again waning
and so i held on
with heartfelt gratitude
to the kind morning glow
accepted all
being offered to me
without question
doubt
sadness or fear
when a grey cloud
drifted into the light
i took that as a message
about obstacles
how they arise in life
and always will
so accept them
and not tumble down
after a moment
the cloud
gave way to sun
and once more
i relished kind morning
and saw how fast changes can occur
both to nature
and the human journey
i know Andy Warhol
i know Andy Warhol from his name and story of course but more so from an exhibition at the Milwaukee Art Museum that i went to in 2010 as i was in Chicago and decided to take a bus there to see it and it blew me away entirely and one aspect that did was that so much of me and my younger times felt like a part of the exhibition as the clothes and colors and trends and celebrity photos and feelings surrounding it kept drawing me back to a time before and i know i was not alone in feeling that as i kept seeing other people my age there and became aware of something that was pulling them into the show and i found that many of the people there were still embracing looks and styles from the represented era and i stayed at the exhibition for many hours and noticed that others did also and we smiled at each other and it seemed as if there was a shared experience of culture and the past between all of us
and recently in 2023 Adelaide i went to an Andy Warhol exhibition and even though this was a different time in another country and a dissimilar exhibition those same feelings from thirteen years ago washed over me and a similar experience with other people there occurred and i knew my reality is my reality and that i know Andy Warhol and myself very well
