In Necessary Wonder Peter Bakowski prescribes an antidote to faceless demographics and statistics, drawing the reader back to the sanctity of the individual through a series of portraits of real and fictitious persons.

From the hapless to the heroic, the laconic to the loquacious, the creative to the criminal, these portraits reveal the poet’s lasting fascination with people and personae. But they transcend mere personality to locate the human experience in the world, juxtaposing contemporary urban poetry against poems set in rural New South Wales and Gippsland.

Intimate and memorable, these are beautifully crafted poems interwoven with wry humour as a kind of philosophical shrug at the world.