'IT is twenty years this December since the renowned Australian poet Gwen Harwood died at the age of seventy-five. She was at the height of her fame and had confidently expected to live to an advanced age—or so she told various correspondents. To be diagnosed with terminal cancer at the beginning of 1995 was a blow. “I can’t remember the medical terminology but it was basically Good Night Sweetheart,” she wrote to a friend. “Oh well, shit eh? as they say in the Blessed City.” ' (Author's introduction)