Editors and Poets: Poetry in Australia 1931-1981

Abstract

I recognise that there are many people present who are poets: besides publishing poets, people who like to read poetry or write it for private contemplation. After fifty years, or any substantial passage of time, any person who has maintained interest in the art is assuredly a poet himself. I bracket poetry readers with writers. Perhaps the most committed poets of all are our constant readers of poetry. Every publishing poet needs their audience desperately. They are the ears to which the poet's voice speaks. Without them all is silence and despair for him. In these technological times the poet's concern is whether the constant reader, the constant poet, is becoming rarer.