'For my first ten years I grew up in Lavender Bay with the smell of salt water, in houses facing the grey curved eye of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. There was a distant rumble, like thunder, when trains went across.'

This is a lyrical and honest memoir of a poet's life in Sydney. From Lavender Bay to Lindfield, Geoff Lehmann tells the story of his life as a poet, tax lawyer, member of the Sydney Push, single father to three small children and finally, a happily married man who returns to poetry writing and translation. His life and work crosses with some of the leading cultural figures of the twentieth century and beyond – Les Murray, Judith Wright, Christopher Brennan, Clive James. He traces the contours of his own life and his family history, and the contours of particular slice of Sydney.