Peter Porter

More sad news. The outstanding Australian-born poet, Peter Porter, died on Friday, aged 81.

He was born in Brisbane, Queensland in 1929, and moved to Britain in 1951. I met him in Australia.

I have his poems back in Corfu, but I also have this selection "Poets on Record 12" here (University of Queensland Press, 1974). It contains an extended-play 45 rpm vinyl disc of Peter reading some of his best known poems such as "Your Attention Please", about a nuclear rocket strike:

"Death is the least we have to fear.
We are all in the hands of God,
Whatever happens happens by His Will.
Now go quickly to your shelters."

Amongst other great poems on the record, he reads "Sex and the Over Forties" and "Mort aux Chats", a poem more about racism than cats.