Burke is a poet who has shed many masks and is the better for it. He revels here in the godawful, funny, earthy business of being alive on Country. There is always death, of course, and worse, for ‘we people who have walked at midnight have seen a great delight of pain’. Proudly Wiradjuri after battling his white skin for years, openly gay after decades of closeted torment – Burke’s pen crackles with energy.