For Corrimal man Ralph Scrivens, there is nothing better than a captive audience.
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The retiree gets a kick out of reciting poetry to anyone willing to listen; a talent that has seen him dubbed the NSW and Queensland bush poetry champion.
Mr Scrivens took out the NSW title last weekend at the state championships in Binalong, the birthplace of Australian poet Banjo Paterson.
It was one of Paterson's poems that helped get him over the line, along with a work by fellow Australian poet Murray Hartin.
"I recited Paterson's The Man from Ironbark and I got second place," he said.
"That poem is just timeless - I'm sure everyone in the audience knew the words as well as I did."
Mr Scrivens started reciting poems at barbecues and parties but it wasn't until he moved to Corrimal four years ago and joined the Illawarra Breakfast Poets that he started competing.
"I just found I really enjoyed getting up on stage," he said.
"I like that feeling of doing well at something and I like entertaining people."
Mr Scrivens also writes his own poetry, balancing composing with regular reciting gigs at the region's nursing homes.
"Elderly people love Banjo Paterson," he said.
"[The poet] didn't die until 1941 so many of them were alive when he was alive; I remember my parents reciting Banjo's poems to me, they're just classics."
Mr Scrivens is set to compete in the Australian bush poetry championships in April in Victoria, as well as at the Kangaroo Valley Folk Festival next month.
The Illawarra Breakfast Poets meet every Wednesday at 7am at Coniston Community Hall.
Along the road you’ll see them, reminders of the loss,
Some flowers tied up to a tree and always there’s a cross,
You’ll see them on a highway or on a country lane,
I’ve seen them on some city street, a souvenir of pain.
They’ll mostly be around a bend or where the road goes straight,
The reason for them being there is hard to contemplate.
But no matter what the story is behind the sorry tale,
It’s never easy to accept, it was all to no avail.
I’ve seen it close at hand, this carnage on the road,
I’ve told a mother of her son and now she bears a load,
And every day she’ll often think of where he could be now,
If only she had warned him, to slow him down somehow.
How often does it happen when the cross it represents,
A person who did nothing wrong, who committed no offence,
The driver then must live alone with his conscience and his thought,
And try his best to come to terms, his actions were for nought.