He had lots of such stories, Bill, & a generous spirit, although the conservatism of his views & religion was something a lot of poets & readers who loved the work couldn’t really understand or accept, me among them. I first met him in 1984 on my first visit to Oz, introduced by a fellow poet who had moved back to Oz from Canada. We shared a bottle of set, I think it was, talked poetry (& agreed to disagree about which modern poets we most admired) & other things, & exchanged books. I suspect mine resides somewhere on his shelves, possibly still unread; our poetics were very different. I taught his work on my Australian & New Zealand poetry courses.He came to Canada back in 2009, I think, & gave a fine reading to a full house here in Edmonton.
Doug
> On Apr 30, 2019, at 6:16 AM, Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Good on you, Doug. I never met him but own two of his collections. He told
> this tragic story apparently a while back at the Adelaide Writers’ Festival.
>
> His father always favoured Les’s older brother to take over the family
> farm. They were out clearing a paddock and came across a huge dead gumtree
> which dad insisted on pushing over. Les said it was rotten and dangerous,
> don’t do it, but Dad insisted. The tree split, killed the brother and Dad
> always blamed Les for it.
>
> Bill
>
>
> On Tue, 30 Apr 2019 at 7:21 am, Douglas Barbour <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>
>> A huge loss of a huge talent (& man). I met him few times, once in Oz, He
>> did love that ‘sprawl’…
>>
>> Doug
>>
Douglas Barbour
[log in to unmask]
https://eclecticruckus.wordpress.com/
Recent publications: (With Sheila E Murphy) Continuations & Continuations 2 (UofAPress).
Recording Dates (Rubicon Press).
Listen. If (UofAPress):
We live in a world of suffering in which evil is rampant, a world whose events do not confirm our Being, a world that has to be resisted. Is is in this situation that the aesthetic moment offers hope, that we find a crystal or a poppy beautiful means that we are less alone, that we are more deeply inserted into existence than the course of a single life would lead us to believe…The energy of one’s perception become inseparable from the energy of creation.
– John Berger
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