In this conversation, writer Anne Connor explores with Australian poet Anne Gleeson ideas of love and loss, big challenges and small victories, as revealed in her most recent poetry collections, Small Acts of Purpose and The Deepest Thing. 

Through a poetic memoir of her sister, who has lived with intellectual disability since birth, Anne’s poetry depicts the reality of her sister’s medical and social conditions, her personality, and how intellectual disability has been experienced in rural Australia.

Since leaving Federation University in 2013, Anne has worked in funeral, bereavement and palliative care. Her poems in Small Acts of Purpose highlight the tenderness and beauty she has witnessed, and the need to do better in how we care for people at the time of death, particularly for those who cannot speak for themselves.

In this deeply moving discussion and poetry reading, the two Annes will shine a light on what it means to live through the hardest times with an open heart.