The Amorous Cannibal (1985) and I'm Deadly Serious (1988) gave notice of Chris Wallace-Crabbe's distinctive gifts. His poems are remarkable for their fusion of opposites': erudition blends with slang and whimsy; tradition meets modernity; and the entire history of European thought is confronted with the newer and rawer country of Australia. With humour, but with a deep-seated seriousness too, Chris Wallace-Crabbe takes the empirical world and sees in it something transcendent.