Catherine Cole's latest work, The Poet Who Forgot, is a memoir about her professional relationship with the late Australian poet A.D. Hope. She was profiled in "The Australian" by Victoria Laurie.
One day, when in her 20s, the undergraduate felt compelled to express her gratitude for all the beautiful words. Slessor was dead but Hope was not. So Cole sent the famous literary figure a note thanking him for the pleasure of his verse."It seemed a way of honouring people just to drop them a line and say, 'I studied your poetry and thank you very much'," Cole explains. She thought little more about it until, to her surprise, a reply came in Hope's handwriting.
"He reacted very kindly. He said, 'If ever you're in Canberra, look us up."' Some months later she did, knocking hesitantly on his office door in the Australian National University's A.D. Hope building. "I was nervous because Alec was already Australia's most famous living poet; he'd written very sexualised poems and people said he had a roguish reputation."
