‘For my
first ten years I grew up in Lavender Bay with the smell of salt water, in houses
facing the grey curved eye of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. There was a distant
rumble, like thunder, when trains went across.’
This is a lyrical and honest memoir of a poet’s life
in Sydney. From Lavender Bay to Lindfield, Geoff Lehmann tells the story of his
life as a poet, tax lawyer, member of the Sydney Push, single father to three
small children and finally, a happily married man who returns to poetry writing
and translation. His life and work crosses with some of the leading cultural
figures of the twentieth century and beyond – Les Murray, Judith Wright,
Christopher Brennan, Clive James. He traces the contours of his own life and
his family history, and the contours of particular slice of Sydney.