Poetry in English has lost one of its paragons, Australian literature one of its finest ambassadors, and Australian Book Review a beloved friend with the death in London of Peter Porter, aged eighty-one. He died on 23 April – Shakespeare’s birthday – by which time our May issue had already gone to print.

Peter Porter’s first collection, Once Bitten, Twice Bitten, appeared forty-nine years ago. His awards were many, notable among them the Duff Cooper Prize for his first Collected Poems (1983) and the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 2002. He lived to see an advance copy of his new Selected Poems, titled Rest on the Flight, which Picador UK has just published, and which Allen & Unwin will publish here in October.