Book description
Better Than God sees the eighty-year-old Porter working with a lyric
engine tuned to perfection, and a mind that shows every sign of speeding
up: Porter can make a song of what another writer might take an essay to
cover. Whether working in the forms of epigram or narrative, or writing
of memory, mortality, Renaissance intrigue or the surreal distortions of
old age - Porter's faith in poetry as a road to the truth shines
through. There are few other writers for whom contemporary events throw
such long shadows or for whom the past is so present, and in Better Than
God one has the sense of the poet attaining an increasingly commanding
height. Porter remains one of the few poets we can open anywhere, and
know that we will always be both enlightened and entertained.
Peter Porter arrived in Britain fifty years ago and has lived here
ever since. Since 1974, he has visited his native Australia often and
considers himself part of the present-day poetical worlds of both
nations. Since 1968 he has been a freelance literary journalist and
reviewer. He has published sixteen books of poems, plus four further
volumes with the Australian painter, Arthur Boyd. He has been married
twice and has, with his second wife, nine grandchildren.
