As a writer, it can sometimes be difficult to pinpoint what motivates you to put pen to paper.
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For Stratford's John V Potts, he finds poetry in life's everyday moments.
"When something happens during the day, whether it's funny or tragic, I put together a couple of lines in my head and go from there," John explained.
Once he gets home, he takes the inspiration and turns it into either a 22 lines poem or a short story.
One such example is a poem titled '000', which talks about the amazing work our firefighters do and what motivates them to join the crew.
"The idea came to me after I had seen a parade on Church Street which had a fire engine in it," John recalled. "It made me start to think about the people and what they do.
"So I went home and wrote the poem."
But his writing isn't just for his own enjoyment. He loves to shares his work and after moving to Stratford about 20 years ago, he started to started to pin his poems up on the notice board at the Stroud Post Office.
"One day I got a phone call from Sue Filson from the Stroud Writers Group asking me to come to a meeting," he said. "So I joined the group and have been a member for 18 years."
For John, writing is a hobby he really enjoys and over the years he has formed quite the collection of work.
While in Bellingen researching his family history, he met a woman who told him about a printer nearby who could help him put together his own book, and thus, 'Pottsie On Entertaining Trip' was born. It's a self-published collection of some of his poems and short stories which he has decided to sell in order to help support the publishing of his next book.
But it's not just the writing inside the book that came from John's creative-side; the image on the front cover was taken from a sketch he did on a post-it note. After writing down the title of the book (an acrostic poem using 'Poet'), he decided to draw a picture of himself sitting on a log by the campfire boiling the billy.
He's a modest man and isn't interested in having a book launch, nor selling the book to make any big profit, he just wants to share his work. Pottsie On Entertaining Trip is on sale at the Gloucester Bookshop for $15.
