Description: 1962 Menzies was in power, Whitlam was deputy Opposition Leader, and the cold war was in full swing.
Brief description: MELINDA SMITH won the Australian Prime Minister's Literary Award for her fourth book of poems, Drag down to unlock or place an emergency call (Pitt St Poetry, 2013). Her work has been widely anthologised both inside and outside Australia and has been translated into languages including Indonesian and Italian. She is based in the ACT and is currently poetry editor of The Canberra Times.