The Book of My Enemy :  Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements are due to the editors of the Australian Book Review, the Australian’s Review of Books, Encounter, the Listener, the London Review of Books, the New Review, the New Statesman, the New Yorker, the Observer, the Spectator, the Guardian and the Times Literary Supplement, in which some of these poems first appeared.

Some of the earlier poems appeared in the Sydney University magazines Arna, Hermes and Pluralist; Melbourne University Magazine; and the Cambridge University magazines Cambridge Review, Carcanet, Inverse, Granta, Pawn and Solstice.

Some poems have been anthologized in Young Commonwealth Poets ’65, edited by P. L. Brent; New Poems 1971–1972 edited by Peter Porter; New Poems 1972–1973, edited by Douglas Dunn; Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, edited by John Wain; Brand X Poetry, edited by William Zaranka; The Faber Book of Parodies, edited by Simon Brett; the Oxford Book of Satirical Verse, edited by Geoffrey Grigson; the New Oxford Book of Australian Verse and the Oxford Book of Australian Religious Verse, both edited by Les Murray; and the Faber Book of Australian Verse, edited by Peter Porter.

Some of the occasional poems first appeared in celebratory collections for Dame Leonie Kramer, Margaret Olley, Peter Porter and Anthony Thwaite. My gratitude to their various editors for the invitation. My gratitude also to Westminster Music and Essex Music, for their generous agreement to the use of some of the earlier song lyrics.

The ur-Version of Peregrine Prykke’s Pilgrimage through the London Literary World was first performed at the Institute of Contemporary Arts on the night of June 3rd, 1974, under the auspices of the Poetry International Festival. It was later printed in the New Review for August 1974 and was also made available in a signed, limited edition of 200 copies. For the Improved Version, published in 1976, the versification was modified extensively throughout the poem, and characters, scenes, speeches, vignettes and atmospherics were added to the tune of some 350 lines.

Special thanks should go to Alan Jenkins, Karl Miller, Anthony Thwaite, Claire Tomalin, John Gross, Mary-Kay Wilmers and the late Ian Hamilton, all of whom, at various times, played uncomplaining host to the kind of guest who not only moves in, but spreads himself out. I should also, on a point of national pride, acknowledge the generosity of Shelley Gare, Les Murray, Peter Porter (again and always), Peter Rose and Luke Slattery, for their gratifying conviction that some of my work in verse should be brought home to the land that somehow inspired it all, even when I was so long away.

I should also thank my book editors, Tom Maschler, Peter Straus and Andrew Kidd, for their generosity in countenancing the sort of publishing venture that joins the bottom line to the far horizon.