AustLit

'Clive James’s series of memoirs began in 1980 with the Unreliable one. Thirty-five years and four more very funny books later, the Five Lives of Clive have been rounded with a sixth: a slim volume of poems. It is probably also the most reliable, as if, paradoxically, James took more poetic licence when working in prose. The prevailing tone is a long way from the hilarious self-deprecation of the memoirs. Of course, the knowledge that one is to die tomorrow – or at best next year – concentrates the mind. That impending death, and the guilts and regrets that accompany it, belong to the category of what James calls ‘deeper considerations’ in his recent (and indispensable) collection of essays, Poetry Notebook (2014).' (9)