With Sappho in the Antipathies: An Irish poet's love letter to Melbourne (and Sydney)

Impractical, technophobic, shy and a nervous traveller, James Harpur suspected he had the perfect qualities for not going to Australia when the Vincent Buckley Poetry Prize gave him the chance to visit the country in 2017. House-sitting in Melbourne, expecting to quietly write and research his putative ancestor, Charles Harpur, 'father of Australian poetry', Harpur instead had one of the most intense months of his life. He met a cast of unforgettable characters, including a church group who...