The Dirt On Overland’s Poetry Editor

When Overland‘s poetry editor, Peter Minter, banned Quadrant‘s poets from his pages on that grounds that they had published in what he likened to a Nazi journal, the curious might have wondered just what sort of verse he actually favours.

Wonder no longer.

Here is Minter in full-blown poetic mode (and kaftan) reflecting on bees and flowers while filling hankies with dirt atop a mountain.

Overland, which has remained resolutely schtum about its poetry editor’s blacklist, has received $399,000 from the Australia Council’s Literature Board since 2010 — money that would not seem to be in jeopardy, given the Australia Council’s ruling that banning poets for the pettiest of petty political reasons falls within its funding guidelines.

— Roger Franklin