AustLit

Shapcott recalls his long friendship with Bruce Beaver and makes mention of a manuscript in his [Shapcott's] keeping. The manuscript is a verse novel begun by Beaver during an Adelaide Writers' Week in the mid-1970s. Shapcott writes that 'the main narrator, a charismatic poet with devoted acolytes, had, in the manuscript, become manic and excited to a point where he feared his own influence on others, and that it would lead them to destruction.' Shapcott says that while 'No one who knew Bruce would think of him as in any way evil', the late poet was concerned by the 'romanticised' and 'frigthening' vision of himself.

Beaver attempted to destroy the manuscript in a fire, but his wife retrieved and sent it to Shapcott for safe-keeping.