'Years ago, during another hie as a dealer in rare hooks and manuscripts, I bought a copy of a Beckett play at auction. It was the ugliest book that has ever passed through my hands: a paperback, seventeenth edition, covers torn, pages crumpled and scribbled over. Its busted spine was brutally reinforced with silver duct tape. And yet this book was special. It was the prompt copy of the San Quentin Players' performance of Samuel Beckett's Endgame, which took place in the old gallows room of the infamous jail.'  (Introduction)

'Sometimes, when I am in a period of great anxiety, I fantasise about running away. I am alone and anonymous in a European city like Venice. The distance from every-thing I know, and the solitude, seem luxurious, spacious, calming. What am I running away from? Or what, specifically, am I seeking? I've had this fantasy for a long time. For as long as I've had intimate .relationships, and wanted to be incredibly close to another person. For as long as I've been seriously writing. For as long as I've been seeking the space, and time, to develop and explore my own imagination. This whole time, like most writers, I have worked, studied, juggled opportunities and obligations. That is life; that is what we do.' (Introduction)

'A unique nine-movement oratoria for seven voices and brass quintet, performed in front of an 84 minute filmic backdrop, premiered in Hobart in April 2018.

'Here, members of the creative team explain the genesis of this extraordinary cross-cultural artistic endeavour inspired by the events of Tasmania's Black War and its aftermath...' (Introduction)

'When British ships first arrived, seeking a new Paradise in what they called Van Diemen's Land, the island was already home to hundreds of Aboriginal families who called it lutruwita. But the British took little interest in Aboriginal culture. Lieutenant John Bowen, who was in charge of the first outpost at Risdon Cove in 1803, pronounced before ever seeing an Aborigine that they would not be 'of any use He thought he would be fortunate if he never saw them.'  (Introduction)

'Moving from idea, to concept, to libretto, to score, to production is always an extraordinary ride. A Tasmanian Requiem was something else again.' (Introduction)

'While filming around Tasmania, I slept many nights in my van, some outside it. I saw more stars than in previous years, and everything seemed crisper, clearer — not only due to upscaling from a HD to a 4k-resolution video camera. The intensity increased as the deadline approached. Michael Gissing and I collaborated on making a nine movement, 84 minute film as the back-drop of A Tasmanian Requiem.' (Introduction)

'A note on the text

'What follows is part of a larger work-in-progress in which a poet and a novelist respond to the archival records of every convict who set out for Botany Bay on the First Fleet. Italicised words are taken directly from contemporary sources; lineated sections, also taken directly from the sources, have been rearranged by the authors into found poems. 

'The authors acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora nation as the traditional owners of the place we now call Sydney, where many of these events take place.' (Introduction)

'So much of life is about acceptance, falling in love included.

'The first two years of my illness: life, a foolish eddy swallowed by a riptide; I, a tiny bubble wanting nothing more than the water's surface, where I could either breathe or properly pop. Dash. I knew what it was with him, or what it was becoming. I didn't know much else. (Hadn't I imagined crawling into his bed? Hadn't I imagined him waking to my body? Hadn't I imagined...?)' (Introduction)