First event of the year and it happens to be in my childhood hometown Camperdown (VIC) featuring two other poets who are also mad for this landscape that I love. What a luxury, poetry of the volcanic plains supported by the brilliant violinist Bert Pratt. The man is a genius with a heart as big as Mt Leura. I’ve been reading bits and pieces from Graeme Kinross-Smith for years but Barry Breen is the man who got me onto poetry. He taught me at school for the last few years. I still hear his voice resonating in my head with the poetry of Yeats and Owen and Eliot. He opened a world to me. I knew this reading would be the last my mother would attend. She who has been my best groupie, my most critical of proof-readers and faithful of readers sparkled on this day. I will be grateful to her forever.
