EDITORIAL

Best Australian Poems 2004

Last year saw the emergence of a two-horse race in the "Best of " stakes in Australian poetry: I'm talking about UQP and Black Inc. going head to head with their respective anthologies.

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Last year Peter Craven's collection featured a poem first published in Cordite - Michael Farrell's bat & ball. This year, with Les Murray taking the reins, it's Alan Wearne's turn - his poem The Ballade of Alan Gould was first published in our Anti/Heroes issue.

While Cordite hasn't received an acknowledgement in the text (remember King Kong?) we assume that the book went to print before August, when Anti/Heroes appeared. In any case, it's great to see that poetry published online is beginning to get some respect, despite some editors' best efforts.

I say this because anyone who's read Murray's introduction to the 2004 Best of will know that he views poetry on the Internet as being connected somehow to the CIA. Which probably explains his open admittance that he doesn't even read poetry on the Internet. All of which makes the first publication of Wearne's poem online even more deliciously ironic.