The Even More Complete Book of Australian Verse - Tapa blanda

So who is this Clarke bloke? 'John Clarke [is] the funniest man in Australia I reckon . . . now playing clever, now playing dumb . . . as though knowledge itself is the greatest of all jokes, but woe betide you if you underestimate the intelligence.' Howard Jacobson 'What Peter Ustinov once did for Grand Prix motor racing, The Tournament does for tennis and world culture combined. Clarke has created a convincing alternative universe.' Clive James 'PS I can't be relied upon for this sort of endorsement unless the author is an Aussie and madly talented like Clarke, so for Christ's sake lose my address' John Clarke's most recent publications include The Tournament (Constable, 2003) and the acclaimed Four Audings and a Funeral (1993).

For many years it was erroneously assumed that poetry's spiritual home was England. But, painstaking and detailed research has highlighted this terrible misconception and at last revealed the truth. Here, to set the record straight, is inconvertible proof of this cultural iniquity. In what can only be described as a unique and long-overdue collection of Australian verse, a wondrous diversity and inspiring wealth of imagery and ideas, lost and unjustifiably forgotten till now, is here apparent, for all to see. Of course English is a language relatively new to Australia, and obviously in a nation so young there can be no Icelandic Sagas, no Chaucer and no Shakespeare. In other respects, however, this is the most complete collection of Australian verse ever published. Works by major poets have been discovered in various parts of the continent and are published here for the first time. Their original oeuvre has been located and biographical details recorded. Many, as you will see, are surprisingly familiar: Fifteen Bobsworth Longfellow, Alain Frost, Emmy-Lou Dickinson, Very Manly Hopkinson, Jems Choice, R.A.C.V. Milne, Rabbi Burns, b b hummings, Sir Don Betjeman, W.H. Auding, Dylan Thompson and Robert Bowell.