'Thank you. Undertow has been a long time coming and I'm really pleased to see the finished product.'
'When I was eight years old my mother bought me this book, which I was really excited about because it was my first hard-cover book and I thought it was very special to have a "Tough One" that was 240 pages - and it was my goal to fill it up with poetry....'
'When I was in Ireland in 2003, I finished this book. I was really happy with that, but I then wanted to go on and turn my work into a collection. Mind you, not a lot of the poems in this book made it into "Undertow".... '
'Many of you might know that being a poet in modern-day Australia's kind of tough. A lot of the time you feel unappreciated and feel like your art form's not very popular. At times I've thought, you know, with my scarce time maybe I should just give it a miss and focus on other things. And at times I've made those deals you sometimes make when you send something to a publisher or a competition and you say, if it doesn't get chosen that's it, I'm going to give it up.... '