In literary circles there are times when one can sit back and say “same old, same old”. But there are other times, particularly in the performance of the spoken word, when you sit forward with a chill creeping up your spine and images visualizing in your mind.
So it was, the first time I heard Roderick Williams performing a stirring original piece of poetry at the Australian Championships at Mulwalla some years ago. It was new, it was powerful, but most of all it was an original insight from a man who had obviously seen a lot of Australia and worked his way around it. A poet who had the talent to put his thoughts and impressions across in a way that he would create a visual kaleidoscope in the mind of his listener.

Naturally, I was not at all surprised when Rod went on to claim most of the sought after awards in the Australian Poetry Circle, culminating in a book of the year award for his children's book, ‘Frogs and Dogs and Kids’ at the Tamworth Country Music Festival's Laureate awards.
His previous book of poetry, ‘Travel the Red Road’, was launched to public acclaim and cemented Rod as one of Australia's best and most imaginative poets. This book will take pride amongst my own poetry collection.

It is with great pride that I now have the honour to write the foreword for Rod's new achievement, ‘Forest of Dreams and Other Journeys of The Red Road’. Rod gives us another superb helping of his ingenious poetry and short stories in a way only Rod can serve it.

He writes of characters and places within this Great Southern Land, with words which can be as gentle as the breeze through a gum tree, or as potent as the bite of a tiger snake. He writes of his lovefor these places and people, dedications to some of our great Australians who are no longer with us, through to using his cutting with in comedy poems such as ‘Bugger the Thongs’ which is a personal favourite of mine.

The magnificent images evoked by such poems as ‘Water Pools Of Peace’, ‘Forst Of Dreams’ and ‘Dusty’, embellished with some fascinating and amazing photography, deems this as not onlhy a book which should be read by all Australians, but as a lesson in how to project one's images of life and experience within one's surrounds into an exceptional work of poetic imagery.
So it is with great pride that I invite you, the reader, to pick up your swag, grab your hat, open your mind and ears and once again ‘Travel the Red Road’ with Roderick Williams, this time passing through the ‘Forest of Dreams’.

          “See you on The Red Road”
          Neil McArthur
          Australian poet, comic and song writer