'My first encounter with Stephen Oliver was to see and hear him reading his poems at the Sandringham Hotel at the then-grungy lower end of King Street, Newtown in the late 1980s. It was a Saturday afternoon, on a stage usually occupied by bands, and he was in his element as he engaged with the punters, giving as good as he received from them. This was no "Poets in the Park" gig, no audience of "peers" politely responding to one of their own. He, along with Vicki Viidikas, was reading to what most of the then poets around town in Sydney may have disparagingly referred to as swine before which their pearls were not to be spread. They were both relishing the incongruous situation as they were reading their work to a hostile or at least an unappreciative audience.' (Introduction)
