One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: that word is love– Sophocles

Poetry is the heart’s music, gently strumming the strings of our emotions, as the poet’s alluring words shape our feelings and perception of the world we live in. Poetry is a song in our minds that requires no music for us to be exhilarated by its exotic charms, while it also ignites within our depleted stores of hope the flames of passion, an incendiary force that incinerates our inhibitions, emancipating our souls to dance in the splendid luxury of language. Such is the charm, the passion, and the peerless elegance of Tom Stodulka AM’s latest anthology, Life is Love. From the first verse of the first stanza of the first poem, I was uplifted to a loftier realm of enlightenment by Tom’s inimitable poetic expression of his daily existence, a style which is refreshing in its candour and powerful in its meaning.

Tom was born in Bathurst, New South Wales, in 1951, in one of Australia’s post-Second World War refugee camps, after his parents, Zdeny and Philomena, had fled Czechoslovakia in 1947 with Tom’s older brother, himself an infant, and eventually found splendour in the grass of Australia. Educated at King’s School and North Sydney Boys’ High, Tom studied law at Sydney University, during which time he achieved academic excellence and was awarded an Australia-Britain Society scholarship, which opened the door to pursuing academic excellence abroad. While studying at the secondary and tertiary levels of education, Tom retained his passion for poetry and was influenced by the works of Robert Frost, Gerald Manley Hopkins, Judith Wright, Banjo Patterson, William Wordsworth, and Alfred Lord Tennyson. In 1976, he joined the Royal Australian Navy (‘RAN’) and served in its officer ranks with distinction for twenty years before then establishing himself as one of Australia’s most highly regarded mediators. Yet while undertaking his training on the RAN’s HMAS Duchess in 1976, there was a glimpse of the future to come, when Tom scribed his poem The World and Future, post the Vietnam War- the meanderings of a young man, the last four lines of which indelibly stamp their eternal mark of humanity’s fragility:

Who will see mankind’s plight?

   Who is left after we have all taken flight?

   In fright of the inevitable darkness.

  Slowly gaining over the dimming light.

Tom has established himself as a highly respected Australian poet and author. Four of his five anthologies are a series of ‘Life is’ poetry, in which Tom unveils his unique style of poetry with an emphasis on nature and discovering the ‘positive and glass half full in a sometimes-troubled world’. Ros Baxter has emphatically endorsed Tom’s talents: “Another touching and thoughtful series from Tom. He traverses the field from global injustice to the personal and everyday seamlessly. All heart, all voice, all Tom.” In Life is Love, you feel Tom’s pure heart in the poem Mellowing with Age – 10 June 2024. Tom has already written his next anthology in the ‘Life is’ series, Life is a Conversation, which will be released soon. To explore all of Tom’s beautiful writing, this link in the picture below will take you to his magical world:

As I previously stated herein, I was uplifted to a loftier realm of enlightenment by Tom’s inimitable poetic expression in Life is Love, and in the final verse of his poem, The Loss of Loved Ones– 16 March 2024, Tom stirred my passions and helped heal some wounds with these enlightening words:

Hope we meet again somewhere and share again in your treasure

May the world forever bask in the glory, the tranquillity, and the rapture of your words, Tom. Congratulations.