The Automatic Oracle

Peter Neville Frederick Porter (1929–2010) was an Australian-born poet who emigrated to England in 1951, becoming a prominent figure in British poetry known for his formal style, epigrammatic wit, and elegiac works influenced by personal tragedy. Notable collections include The Cost of Seriousness, The Automatic Oracle (Whitbread Poetry Award, 1988), Possible Worlds (Australian Literature Society Gold Medal, 1990), and Max Is Missing (Forward Poetry Prize, 2002); he received the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (2002), Duff Cooper Prize (1983), and Medal of the Order of Australia (2004), among others.