'I frequently begin a launch speech by saying something about my connection with the launchee. This occasion will be no exception. However, there is a slight question-mark as to when exactly Earl Livings and I first met. We seem to agree that it must have happened at the poetry readings in the Lower Town Hall at Hawthorn, which we both attended from the late 1980s into the mid ’90s. We even did a live three-way collaboration there with the composer Roger Alsop in an event featuring some of our poetry set to music in electronic, computer-generated form! So this poet and I do go back a fair way.' (Introduction)