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The Language poets were (and still are, to some extent) a loosely affiliated group of American poets (or ‘practitioners’) who started publishing in the 1970s in self-edited small magazines. They felt that the alienation brought about by modernity was not captured in the lyrical poetry of the day. Avant-gardists, they were interested in the politics of making the poem and the politics made by the poem. For me, this sort of linguistically disruptive verse is about disrupted belief, whereas Les needed more than the healing of poetry to hold his bullied and disappointed world together.

He was there for a conference where he was guest of honour. I had arrived early that morning from the city where I’d been visiting my then-partner—we had begun an intermittent separation during which I spent most of my week down at Williams with my shearer brother, Stephen. Stephen would go to work early and I’d spend the day drinking, staggering through Dryandra forest, and attempting to write poems. Poet and academic Dennis Haskell had invited me to drop in on the conference to meet Les. I was chatting to Dennis about this just recently, and he said I poked my head into a talk and briefly said hello to Les before meeting him later that morning in the bar.

At a party, talking about Warhol’s autobiography as we ran out back and over the fence, the cops blooming like pop art. In my Chairman Mao cap and with the silver cigarette-box C. had given me filled with Chesterfields, I was an anomaly of his and my creation. He was jealous of poets and artists and musicians, and wanted me to himself. He said that to live was to rot. I agreed.

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