Included are many major poets well-known outside of Australia, such as Peter Porter, James McAuley, Dorothy Hewett, and Gwen Harwood, as well as many poets who have long deserved international recognition. The selections offer a challenging view of "early modern poetry" in Australia up to the 1960s, and the decade of turmoil, 1965-1975, is presented with new insight. The years from 1965 to the 1990s are revealed as a period of richness and increasing diversity for the poets, showing the impact of feminism, multicultural writing, and post-modernism on their works.