‘I can see that the book helped me to lay strong and sure foundations for the 30 books I’ve created since, which is why—out of the countless writers I’ve read and been inspired by—Goldberg is the writer who’s had the biggest effect on my writing.’

‘”Refugee Memories” helped me understand my mum’s frustrating politics. She is a single mother, a Vietnamese refugee with little English literacy, and was on Centrelink after her pirated video rental business collapsed in 2015. She shares videos of Donald Trump’s speeches on Facebook.’

‘Krauth had won the Australian/Vogel literary prize a dozen years earlier... But I didn’t know of him or any of that then. I just recognised that the whitefella sitting in the big chair with the tousled hair and long forehead had a peculiar glint to his eye.’

‘She just radiated generosity — not the sort of empty friendliness you get at networking events, or the condescending niceness of a celebrity doing you a huge favour, but someone genuinely kind.’

‘There was always something special and luminous in the stripped back verse of Porter. She could make words dance across the mind and sear themselves into your cerebellum, she could lift you up, she could tear your heart out in a way that made you say ‘thank you’ then beg for more.’

‘Fahrenheit 451 both scared the bejesus out of me and encapsulated the ‘locked and loaded’ feeling of being seized, seduced and taken over by a piece of fiction, and the glimmering politicising awareness that reading itself is a subversive act.’

‘Page after page, I grew prouder to discover that the father of these words originated from the same cultural identity as my own — Kahlil Gibran became the embodiment to me of everything dignified and wise and literary in being Lebanese.’

‘It wasn’t all smoked kippers and ginger beer, there were smugglers, kidnappers and poison pen letters. Where were the parents in all this? Working, sick, away, it didn’t matter. What mattered was that those four children and Timmy the dog were in danger, and me along with them.’

‘These are poems about terrible suffering but they are also strangely beautiful. I was impressed by the brilliant technical control and moved by the content.’