When I was 18, I came here, I was lonely, I thought I might not write poetry again and this place changed that for me. Growing up on the Central Coast and performing poetry on the Central Coast I felt like a bit of a weirdo being a writer. You know, even though there were poets on the Central Coast I felt like I was the only person especially who was writing what I was writing and my friend group I was talking about issues that they wouldn't want to hear about. So I got on a train from Wyong and got on a couple more trains to end up in Bankstown. And that moment when I first walked out of the station to the Arts Centre, it's a five minute walk, and I was just bombarded and overwhelmed with multiculturalism. I've never seen that many different cultures represented in one room before. So different to what I've known. Poetry is knowing who you are and this is the most honest I have ever been in between fifteen to twenty and for the first time in my life I understand what they mean when they say that the point is not the poet and the point is the poetry. After I performed I just experienced so much love and so much support and so much respect. In my biological family, the conversations I have here I'd never be able to have, or the support I wouldn't be able to receive. There's nothing in the world that can connect people the way that art does. Being able to perform and being able to say what I feel, especially here at Bankstown, is something really special. The reason this place is so important and the people that are my family here is so important, is because having that in my life helps me to think, to question, to grow, to become more than what I hear on the news or what I want to believe. Their perspective actually helps my perspective.