To be a poet is a condition rather than a profession.

Summer in Tasmania means festivals. More specifically, summer in Tasmania means fart festivals. Of course, I am a loather lover of the arts. My problem, however, is that the current MONA FOMA - MONA Festival of Music and Art , which seems to have centred itself in Hobart's Salamanca district, has meant an array of LOUD art right outside my office window.

The past two weeks has seen a [ahem] sandpit with a piano rigged up to four amplifiers in it sat literally metres away from my desk. The "art" [ahem] involves members of the public (and their children), banging on said piano throughout the day. Compounding my misery, there is a looped track consisting of rising and falling harmonies that appears designed to infiltrate ones head with the sole purpose of engendering an intense desire to extricate one's brain with a teaspoon.

Art indeed!