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About the Author
Steven Herrick is an acclaimed Australian author widely recognized as a pioneer of the verse-novel genre for young adults. After completing his education at the University of Queensland following non-traditional employment as a fruit picker, storeman, and shop clerk, he began publishing poetry in the 1980s across journals including Arena, Hermes, and Poetry Australia. His first verse novel, Love, Ghosts and Nose Hair (1996), launched a prolific career spanning twenty-five books for children and young adults. Herrick's work has been twice awarded the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards and shortlisted for the Children's Book Council of Australia Book of the Year Awards. Currently, Herrick divides his time between nine months touring Australian schools and three months cycling through the countryside, pedalling slowly while contemplating his next project.
You can read more about Steven Herrick here: ➥ Steven Herrick Wikipedia Profile
About the novel
The Simple Gift (2000) follows Bill, a sixteen-year-old boy who decides to leave home after years of experiencing neglect and abuse from his alcoholic father. With nothing but a small backpack and some money, Bill boards a train and heads to the nearest big city, where he ends up camping under a bridge by an abandoned goods yard.
There, he encounters two unlikely companions: Old Bill, an ageing alcoholic hermit who lives nearby in a makeshift shelter, and Caitlin, a bright teenage girl from a privileged family. Despite their vastly different backgrounds and circumstances, an unexpected friendship begins to form among these three outsiders. Through this connection, they discover the simple gifts life can offer, such as friendship, understanding, and the possibility of finding somewhere to belong.
Told through free verse poetry, the book explores themes of homelessness, family dysfunction, social class divides, and the redemptive power of human connection without relying on dramatic resolution. Herrick's writing captures both the rawness of displacement and the quiet moments of tenderness that can emerge between people living on society's margins. The Simple Gift was named a Children's Book Council of Australia honour book.
Themes
As you read through these poems, look closely at how the text addresses these central concepts:
Belonging and Home: The novel redefines what "home" means. It contrasts Bill's abusive physical house with the warmth and emotional safety he finds inside an old, abandoned train carriage surrounded by true friends.
The Power of Human Connection: The life-changing impact of small, unconditional acts of kindness. The "simple gifts" exchanged between Bill, Old Bill, and Caitlin show how empathy can heal trauma.
Class Divides and Socioeconomic Prejudice: Examined through Caitlin’s affluent background versus Bill’s homelessness and Old Bill's displacement, challenging stereotypes about wealth, worth, and dignity.
Displacement and Renewal: The process of stripping away past trauma to rebuild a self-determined future. Both the young and old characters find a path toward recovery by leaning on one another.
Glossary
Keep an eye out for these structural and thematic words during your study:
Verse Novel: A type of novel written in poetry rather than prose, using short stanzas and poetic techniques to tell a continuous story.
Displacement: The state of being forced or driven away from one's home, environment, or familiar circumstances.
Hermit: A person living in solitude, often entirely apart from local society or traditional community structures.
Analysis
Dive deeper into the real-world social dynamics and structural analysis of the text:
➥ Analysis Article: Can our unconscious prejudices be overcome
➥ Forbes News Article: improve social health with strong connections
➥ Analysis Article: why belonging is so important and how to create it
➥ News Article: Homeless people deserve the same right to their belongings that we all have
Online Q&A with Stephen Herrick (click to expand)
Online Q&A with Stephen Herrick (click to expand)
Why did you write "the simple gift"?
I wanted to explore the relationship between a young man and an old man. As adults, we seem to believe that the idea of being an influence works only one way - we adults can influence young people for the better. In the book, I wanted to show it working the other way - that is, young Billy really being the positive influence, in fact, the catalyst, for Old Bill rejoining the world. I know my two teenage sons are a wonderful positive influence on my own life. It seems to me that the world of young people is becoming increasingly marginalized by mainstream media. As adults, we need to accept, encourage, and indeed, embrace the world of young people. Let’s see the relationship as a priceless two-way street.
How did you start writing this book - did you have a definite plot outline, characters, etc?
No, not really. I've written all my verse-novels for YA in the same way. Firstly, I start with a location. In this case, I remembered staying in a disused railway carriage in Ballarat, Victoria when I was a young person hitching around the country. It was probably the best place I slept - warm and comfortable (and free!). I had a very relaxed teenage life. My parents had no great expectations for me, and they put no pressure whatsoever on me. I spent time travelling around the country, working as a fruit picker, or in a cannery (like Billy and Old Bill), and I slept and stayed where I could. I felt incredibly lucky.
Once I had this location, it was a relatively simple thing to put my character Billy in the carriage, and see what happened. This is important in my writing… I very rarely have a strong plot outline. I like to create location, then character, and see what happens.
So your characters develop as you write the story?
Once I have a character in my mind, I start to think about the way they would respond to events happening in their life. That is, I give them a set of moral parameters (for want of a better description) - so in "gift"
* how will Billy respond to help from Ernie, the train-driver?
* how will Billy react to his need for food and shelter now he’s left home?
* how will Billy treat the old hobo next door in the train carriage?
I enjoy this aspect of the writing process, because it really is a case of me finding out about the characters as I go. I don't have a particular point in the narrative I want to reach - I'm just happy to go along with Billy, Caitlin, and Old Bill for the ride! This works well for me as a writer, as it means I don't feel like I'm rushing the story - I'm just letting the characters interact, and wander…
There are lots of examples of this throughout the book - one obvious example is the different ways Billy and Caitlin respond to first seeing Old Bill. Or how Old Bill slowly changes as his relationship with Billy grows.
Did you meet someone like Old Bill, or Caitlin when you were travelling?
I did meet lots of down and outs on my travels, but Old Bill is a fictional character. Sadly, so is Caitlin!!! But I did meet lots of people who helped me, and were friendly to me. Ernie, the train-driver, is actually based on a train guard in Queensland, who helped me out of the speedboat I was freezing in (just like "gift"), and let me stay in his warm cabin. This bloke even took me out for lunch when the train arrived in Gladstone. Most of the characters in my novels are fictional, but all the locations are based on places I know well.
Anything else you want to tell us about "gift"
...One reviewer called Billy an atypical hero, which I thought was interesting. That got me thinking about what is heroic, and how it relates to some of the characters in my other books. I reckon Billy from "gift", Tom from Tom Jones saves the world, Ron and Isabelle from Do-wrong Ron, and Jack and Annabel from A place like this all share a similar trait - within the story they do something of great value, that is a little thing - give friendship and hope to an old hobo; bring a father and grandfather together (in Tom Jones); help an old lady became part of the community (in Ron); encourage a pregnant girl to decide on her future (in A place like this). These simple little things are what I think of as heroic. They are done by ordinary people, in a quiet unobtrusive way, and to commit these acts it requires compassion and love and respect. And they are far more heroic and necessary than any world-record sporting achievement. And they cannot be measured in dollars and cents.
My teacher is always going on about how poets write... how they construct an image. Can you tell us?
The short answer... NO! The slightly longer answer... I try to inhabit the world of each of my characters. So, in the poem "Cold" p.10, Billy thinks "the wind and rain hits you in the face with the force of a father's punch." That was a relatively easy image to think of because Billy was escaping the violence of his home life. Maybe the secret to writing an effective and striking image is empathy - putting yourself in the place of each character. For example, look at the way weather is used in many poems to convey atmosphere; to set the scene.
Yeah, that's fine, but what about BELONGING!!!!
I know, I know. The HSC looms large. I can't claim to have had this theme in mind when I wrote the book. However, I think a closer understanding of the notion of each characters search for an identity and for a place in the community they've constructed would be worthwhile. I also think it's fair to say that a search for an identity can be related to the idea of wanting to "belong" to oneself. That is, the search for a conscience you can live with/inhabit. The use of "interior monologues" throughout "gift" can be seen as "keeping your own community" - the conversation with yourself (which is the essence of an interior monologue) is an attempt to understand how you belong both in this world, but more importantly, to your sense of self.
Online Q&A - Copyright Steven Herrick 2009
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