Alvik – setting for the poems in this book – is a sleepy little industrial town, set between the Hardanger Fjord and its own little mountain for climbing. Behind Alvik the serious mountains go on forever, all the length of Norway, till there’s almost no more north. The town is brightly painted and decorated with laughter – a children’s town, if you remember. The artists and the poets, the singers, the musicians – they live in a fairytale house, where winter is always coming, even when it has arrived. But spring is pressing too, and summer is an open book, where the blue goes up forever and a day will never end. The forest is the poor man’s coat. Step in – let other worlds elapse. Read the leaves as they lie fallen. Follow the trail of light. Australian