'The expression of the poetic imaginary in recent decades in the poetry and prose of David Malouf has explored the inversion of anthropocentric hierarchies of life forms while probing the perceived boundaries of the human. At the same time as it appears to offer a re-balancing of power between what has been traditionally viewed as 'human' and 'animal', Malouf's work often invokes an aggressive hunter-hunted relationship that would seem to work against any notion of a surrender of control by a dominant human species. This paper will investigate how this ambivalence, often troubled by an awareness of the writer's capacity for both creativity and deception, is figured and refigured in several of his works since he commenced publication in the 1960s.'