Mark O’Connor is a poet who has been in the news lately. Following in the steps of the ancient Greek poet, Pindar, he was appointed (by the Australia Council) as ‘official’ Olympic poet – though it seems inevitable that much of his work will concern only the Olympic flame on its way to the Games and the events to be seen on TV since neither SOCOG nor the Australia Council saw fit to give him a journalist’s pass. Unfortunately, all this Olympic fuss has tended to obscure his work of three decades up to this point, a journey well represented in his recent The Olive Tree: Collected poems.

O’Connor is well-known for his lifetime project of mapping in verse all the major regions of Australia. The survey began with his Reef Poems (1976) and has continued with poetry on the Queensland rainforests, Central Australia, the Blue Mountains, the Snowy Mountains, and more recently Kakadu and the Top End. Earlier detours have included four years in Europe and a residency at the Museum of Victoria. The book’s editor (noted anthologist, John Leonard) has sensibly arranged all this material into several clearly defined regional sections. He has also included a group called ‘Sources’ which includes some key poems about the poet’s childhood and other important pieces which don’t fit the regional paradigm. It is significant and, in a way, disconcerting that some of the book’s best poems occur in this seemingly anomalous section.