If any generalisations can be made of Australian poetry, one of them might be that Australia is no country for old poets. It is hard enough finding an audience while you’re alive. Then, when you’re no longer around to read or speak of them, your poems will likely slip into oblivion.

A precious handful of late Australian poets are still read today, and an even smaller handful of those are in print. For a brief glimmer of time, UWAP was publishing the collected works of canonical figures such as John Shaw Nielson, Francis Webb and Judith Wright, but that series is now defunct.