Myron Lysenko moved to the Macedon Ranges to be among the artistic community. The Woodend resident chats with Serena Seyfort.
What’s your connection with the Macedon Ranges?
I moved to Woodend from Brunswick East in 2011 because a lot of my artistic friends had moved here.
How are you involved in the local community?
I run a monthly poetry reading called Chamber Poets. Some of the best poets in Victoria have featured there. I started the group because I wanted to get in touch with the creative people in the area. I thought, what better way than to start a poetry reading? It was started in a cafe which was also an art gallery. And I’m in a local band called Black Forest Smoke. I play ukulele and write the lyrics. We’re the resident band at the monthly Chamber Poet meetings. I also teach creative writing at Woodend Neighbourhood House on Monday nights.
What do you like about the area?
I just love being with so many different creative people in a beautiful part of the world. I’ve met lots and lots of creative people here – painters, sculptors, actors, musicians. I like the trees and kangaroos and some of the magical places here. I love Straws Lane … you bring a visitor, you tell them a ghostly story about Hanging Rock and then you park the car and it rolls back up the hill! That’s one of my favourite places. Hanging Rock is another one of them, so is Turpins Falls out past Kyneton. It’s basically a big hole in a paddock. You can’t see it … it’s like being in a completely different place.
If you could change anything about the area, what would it be?
If it was the impossible, I’d like to go back in a time machine and make the local indigenous people welcome and make sure everyone treated them with respect. I’ve been trying to find our local indigenous history and it’s very hard to find about the local area.
Has much of your writing and your poetry been inspired by the local area and the local community?
One of the things I love doing is writing haikus. I’m the Victorian representative of the Australian Haiku Society. I go to a lot of scenic spots in the local area and sit around and walk around and write haiku about what I observe. I also conduct haiku walks. I get a group of people … we walk around for a couple of hours and write haiku and come back and workshop them. They love the feeling of walking around and writing about what’s happening in front of you right now, because that’s kind of like a creative meditation. We write about the natural landscape and the way you interact with it.
