Roddy said:

"I recently bought Landbridge and was interested in what jvk was saying
about 'Sydney' in the introduction.  It seem to me that 'centres' may
have monopolies on publishing and establishments, but that they don't
seem to produce their fair share of poets.  Only a handful of Sydney
poets in Landbridge which seems few, considering it has over a fifth of
the population."


The one obvious thing to say is that there are Sydney poets who didn't
appear in Landbridge. Doesn't every review of every anthology you've ever
read list the omissions? I'm not quite sure of the point here.

For the record, I was born and bred in Sydney, for my sins, and still
live here. I may be more than an exception than a rule - who knows? I was
talking to another poet friend of mine last night (born in England but
lived in Sydney most of his life) and he said that you can be in the
right place at the right time and get taken up by the 'taste-makers'. And
you can be unlucky and be in the wrong place, be the wrong age, wrong
gender, etc, etc, etc. We, of course, were sharing our private opinions
on who has been 'anointed' and who hasn't, at least in the world of Oz
poetry (I'm sure it's a common past-time throughout the poetry world). It
goes without saying that the older you get the more cynical you become.

But, yes, there are one or two poets from Sydney. Maybe more, indeed,
even 'good' ones (however you may wish to construct that) who don't
appear in the latest anthologies. There are all sorts of reasons for
that, as you can imagine. "Wrong place/wrong time" is just one of them.

Anthologies reveal as much by what they leave out as they include, to
state the obvious. But as I have not read Landbridge I haven't done a
head count. Hugh seems on top of the Sydney:Melbourne ratio in that
particular volume but what are we talking about? City of birth, city of
current residence, city where someone wrote most of their work? What
effects do your surroundings have on your work? Does it change when you
change towns? I think I am a very 'Sydney' poet but I wonder sometimes
what that means.

Cheers,
Jill



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