'Sure I'm serious, ' says Ian Crittenden, a poet certain that the satirist's task is to both annoy and entertain. 'But I'm not that serious. With Australia a land of unending targets including its poets and myself, well wouldn't you?'

Alan Wearne

If memory is cognition, then the memory of these poems will be cognate with greatness: Popean, Swiftian, a mighty map of moral misprision.

Harold Bloom

Soil of Myself is the second greatest work of verse satire this country has ever produced.

Trey Panning

Ian Crittenden was born in London in 1963 and emigrated with his family to Australia in 1969, initially settling in Western Australia's Avon Valley. He currently divides his time between Quorrobolong and Quirindi in the Hunter Valley of NSW where he works as a soil scientist on mine remediation projects. Three of his poems have been shortlisted for the Newcastle Poetry Prize. This is his first collection.