Bron Bateman is a poet, editor, playwright, and educator from Boorloo (Perth, Western Australia). Love Like This Isn’t Harmless is her fourth collection of poetry.

Read on for a poem from the book.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Bateman’s poems embody empowerment, evolution and healing. Through a fiercely feminist lens, this collection confronts raw realities with unapologetic honesty and profound insight, shedding light on the shadows that too often remain unseen.

When tackling tough themes like sexual abuse and domestic violence, Bateman is unflinching and fearless, compassionate and courageous.

From intimate portrayals of family dynamics to reimaginings of mythos, these poems spark conversation and contemplation.

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Doctor

After Anna Jacobson

I sit in the same chair each time, no real reason,

like my habit of falling asleep between sentences.

She snaps at me, her threshold for patience decreasing

with each passing year: please try to stay in the present,

then asks how I’ve been.

I have written off one car and crashed through

red traffic lights in another, the crush of silence –

asleep at the wheel. Police. Ambulance. A trip to the hospital.

The minor prangs and scratches

not worth mentioning, except this morning I do,

a thousand cuts which are someday going to kill me.

She says it’s because I do not concentrate.

I am too medicated to realise I am merely overmedicated.

For every symptom, she prescribes a pill.

For every pill, there is another –

different colour, same colour, varying shapes, similar effects.

Dysphoria, suicidal ideation, torpor, weight gain. Sleep.

Destruction by compliance.

I wish I could say there was a showdown,

telling her the cost of this –

gathering courage about me like a cape,

then leaving, bravely, never to return.

But the truth is: she is old. She retires.

I am both enraged and bereft.

My new doctor says, and I think he means this kindly,

You’re such a mess, but I can fix you. While he talks,

I imagine his ceiling collapsing in dust

rafters poking through plaster like greenstick fractures,

a beautiful and terrible design.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bron Bateman is a poet, editor, playwright, and educator from Boorloo (Perth). Her first poetry collection, People from bones was published by Ragged Raven Press (UK) in 2002.

Her PhD, a collection of poetry and an exegesis exploring female embodiment and experiences of motherhood was completed in 2012. Her second collection, Of Memory and Furniture, which was Highly Commended in the Victorian Premier’s Prize for Poetry in 2021, was published by Fremantle Press in 2020. Her third collection, Blue Wren, was published by Fremantle Press in 2022. Her work has been published in collections and journals such as Westerly, Southerly, Cordite Poetry Review, and the Australian Poetry Journal.

In 2004 she was awarded the Bobbie Cullen Memorial Prize for Creative Writing. In 2017 she received Columbia University’s Winter Poetry Prize and in 2021 and 2024 she was shortlisted and commended for the Tom Collins National Poetry Prize. Her edited anthology Women of a Certain Courage was published by Fremantle Press in 2025.

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