The title of this lecture echoes that of one given by A.E. Houseman in Cambridge in 1933 when he had been Kennedy Professer of Latin at the University for some 25 years. For the third in the annual series of lectures sponsored by The Housman Society the distinguished Australian-born poet, reviewer, critic and journalist who has published over thirty books during his long sojourn in LOndon, will be giving his personal testament as to what poetry is.