It is with sadness we note the passing of Dr Jean Talbot, poet and activist and esteemed teacher at the University of Newcastle.
Along with her husband, Norman Clare Talbot, Jean emigrated to Australia in 1963 with the first of their three children. Norman was also a long-serving teacher and researcher at the University of Newcastle, and together Jean and Norman became key figures in the Hunter Valley writing scene. Jean’s own poetry appeared in a range of anthologies, most notably in a collaborative collection with Shiela Morgan, Layers of Meaning (Nimrod Publications, 1994), and recently in a monograph collection of her own, The Inner Light (Catchfire Press, 2022). Dael Allison has written of this “luminous” collection that Jean “holds her silent centre in a web of dark and shining poems that segue from blitz-blighted English childhood to the sea-blue shock of a new life in Newcastle, NSW. There, with wit and understanding rooted deeply in the fecund mysteries of garden, rainforest sacred cave and family, she pulls us with her pell-mell towards the light”. Jean was also a proud supporter of the Newcastle writing scene outside the University.
Jean joined “Poetry at the Pub, Newcastle” during its early days in the basement of the Grand Hotel and helped teach creative writing through events like the Morpeth Writers Camp. She edited the collection Huntress: Woman poets of the Hunter Valley (Nimrod Publications, 1981) and you can hear Jean talking about writing on and by women in several episodes of 2NURFM’s archive of “The Word This Week”.