Barham Ferguson
Army, Poet - Painter - Photographer
Barham spent a lot of his young life on his grandparents’ property near the Victorian township of Ballarat. As a strong young man, he was invaluable on the farm shearing sheep, shoeing horses, birthing goats and burning dead sheep. It developed in him a deep love of animals but didn’t send him down the path his mother had hoped for: to be a professional horse rider. While ride he did, the uniform beckoned from an early age and he joined the Army Cadets in Year 8 and spent the next four years getting a taste for military life.
Joining the Australian Regular Army, Barham served for thirty-two years, before transitioning to the army reserves. He was commissioned at the Royal Military College, Duntroon and retired as a Lieutenant Colonel. During that time, he served on operations in Bougainville, Southern Thailand, South Sudan, Iraq, Israel, Jordan and Afghanistan.
His experiences in these distant lands would become inspiration for many poems and photographs - not just from a military perspective, but also addressing humanity and the environment.
Barham’s art practices include poetry, painting and photography. He is also an ambassador for the Australian National Veterans Art Museum (ANVAM) and is a strong advocate for the use of artistic endeavours to create personal change.
He began writing ‘proper’ poetry while he was in the service and he found the language in it was deep, moulded and liberating. It became an unleashing.
Barham has strong views about what creativity means to him. He would prefer to hear, “See that poet? He used to serve in the military,” rather than “See that veteran? He became a poet.” Even with more than half his life in the military, he strongly believes it should shape you, rather than define you.
“Poetry takes a reader or a listener where your heart and mind want to go. It gives you your own imagery, interpretations of sound and smell, regardless of why I wrote it or what I saw… yet, in some cases, you will see exactly what I saw. I love to see a reaction to something I write that is also in someone else’s life. That’s why I write poetry.”
“I didn’t choose to write on certain topics. They would just come to me. From initial thoughts to completion would sometimes last no longer than 3-4 minutes. I could sit at home on the couch for hours on end and write nothing. Then, on a plane ride from Sydney to Canberra, I could trot out four poems on different subjects.”
When Barham was deployed to Bougainville for seven months, he wrote an astounding 180 poems. At this time, A Feeling of Belonging was published by the ADF Journal and contained twenty-seven of his poems focusing on military themes of both peace and conflict. Many people were reading and liking his writing, so he published his own work; Love, Life & Anzac Biscuits. Although these poems also offer a military focus, they tell a much wider story as they transit through some of life’s major events from an Australian point of view and not just a soldier’s.
“Poetry takes a reader or a listener where your heart and mind want to go. It gives you your own imagery, interpretations of sound and smell, regardless of why I wrote it or what I saw…yet, in some cases, you will see exactly what I saw. I love to see a reaction to something I write that is also in someone else’s life. That’s why I write poetry.”
He also believes that all creative expression needs focus on skill as well as enjoyment, in order to take an artist to the next step.
“Art is a universal language, and a gift to both the creator and the beholder.”
As well as poetry, Barham has always been interested in photography and this has expanded to include painting. As a child, he watched his grandfather paint portraits. The boy liked what the old man created, rather than the process.
“I attempted to recreate my grandfather’s style but found it wasn’t happening. My paintings seem to evolve from my mind, like a Tolstoy novel. When I’m painting, I always consider it time well spent. Creating changes your mindset completely.”
Barham’s life in Canberra today with his teen-aged daughter, Isobel, is a satisfying combination of fatherhood, work and creativity as Isobel also paints.
“The army didn’t create my personality. I had respect for people before I joined, and they just reinforced that.”
This respect he offers Isobel, and those he meets in his daily life and interactions.
