Most days my dog Berkeley, a black labrador–cocker spaniel cross, takes me for a walk. If there’s time to kill, we weave through the 1960s-era suburban streets of Doncaster and follow an underarm of greenery that runs beneath the shoulder of the Eastern Freeway. If Berkeley and I are full of beans, we run to the freeway and back—a circuit just shy of five kilometres—although we’ve never mastered the heartbreak hill that is High Street. If time is tight, or I’m lazy, we amble to the oval at the end of my street, where Berkeley sniffs the backsides of my neighbours’ dogs for 20 minutes then announces she’s ready to return home by crapping in the grass beside the concrete cricket pitch.

The day Keith Sinclair popped into my head was a lazy day. Berkeley was working her way towards the concrete cricket pitch while I walked laps, listening to the New Yorker Poetry podcast (I know he’s not Scottish, but Paul Muldoon sounds like the poetry world’s answer to Sean Connery) and gazing at the craggy outline of Melbourne’s CBD to the west.