Damaged Glamour

John Forbes lived brilliantly and dangerously: ill-fated love affairs, addictions, uncompromising artistic vision, dead at forty-seven.

Aidan Coleman examines the poet's oeuvre, alongside his taste-shaping criticism, his collaborations with fellow artists, his generosity and pugnacity, and his magnetism as a teacher and reveller in Europe and Australia.

Damaged Glamour is the first comprehensive portrait of the dazzling but troubled poet, set against the backdrop of the Sydney and Melbourne literary scenes at a time when poetry was worth fighting over.

John Forbes was a complicated, glorious, compulsively ironic and - yes - tragic figure of recent times who left behind great poetry and prose as part of a sprawling archive that includes the many voices of those who knew him.

Aidan Coleman is an expert guide to this rich material, interpreting the work with discernment and the life with sympathy. He lets things speak for themselves, achieving in this way a remarkably balanced portrait of a troubled artist with a difficult life.

Larger questions come into view, of vocation and a poet's role in society. If you are a poet, do you have to lead a poet's life, choosing art over life and making it hard for those you love or who love you? Damaged Glamour is as disturbing as it is celebratory and will have its readers reaching for Forbes. NICHOLAS JOSE