[ross hamilton hill]

I heard that rumour too John and Quincy, I wrote for Nation, a communist funded magazine, was rejected several times by Quadrant. This was back when the cold war was raging. Quadrant is a current affairs/politcal magazine, it's not a literary magazine, but publishers poetry as part of the mix. It was very obviously right wing back then (when Australia became very socialist).

Les Murray accepted many writing grants from the socialist Labor party when they were in power, then he changed his tune and said literary grants were pernicious and poets should 'get off the government teat'.

We also now use the term thong to refer to ladies underwear, but we still call the rubber Asian sandals thongs, we also call them flip-flops. We also refer to someone who can't make up his mind as a flip-flop.

'budgie smugglers' a great term, are 'Speedos', a brand of swimming costume, the male ones are brief and light, people have used them to smuggle budgerigars out of Australia, the inference is they show off the male genitalia. The current prime minister is very sporty, he used to swim marathons in 'budgie smugglers', but his wife got a bit worried that he was revealing too much and banned him from appearing in them (that was the story).

I saw Les Murray at a poetry reading, I thought he was terrible at reading his poetry, I walked out, alone in the foyer of this big theatre, by then another equally boring poet was reciting, I saw Les take a huge, and I mean huge slice out of the large camembert that was part of the buffet, in wait for after the readings, he walked towards me and smiled, rolling back his eyes, I'd like to say I made some witty remark, but I didn't.

He mostly writes in free verse but does, very rarely, write formal poetry. He writes a lot of what I think is flawed work but when he gets it right it's as good as poetry ever gets.