When I’m not wasting time writing record reviews about non-existent bands, poems about dysfunctional families, prose poems about imaginary cities, new definitions for strange Dutch words, the odd (yes, odd) sonnet, an occasional ode to the Buddha Machine, away on explorations in Abendland or Morgenland, posting as Clint Bo Dean in disguise and so on, I’m actually attempting to do some work on what they sometimes refer to as a PhD. Call me suicidal but upon completing my Masters at the University of Melbourne in 2004, a strange feeling of optimism (or stupidity) overcame me and I sought, successfully, to enrol as a PhD student at Swinburne University of Technology – an institution, coincidentally, that my grandfather attended in the early twentieth century when it was still a Working Man’s College.