John Tranter is widely recognized in Australia as, of all the major poets, the one most committed to a continual process of poetic experimentation. He is one of the older poets of the large group of writers coming to prominence in the late 1960s and, as the editor of the major anthology that collects the earlier work of that group (The New Australian Poetry, 1979), has had a position of authority and respect. His desire to make his own poetry continually new has led him to form strong bonds not only with contemporary American poetry but also with contemporary European and, much more surprisingly, classical poetry. He is an avant-garde poet in the sense that he has imported some of the versions of Surrealism into Australian poetry, and yet he has always been interested in poetic craft and the challenges it poses. He also remains a distinctively Australian poet...