Kevin Gilbert is a poet and journalist whose life's work bears witness to the anguish, the shame, and the glory of his stubbornly surviving people. The voice of the living Australian Aboriginal is rarely heard: but in Gilbert's writings the authentic cry of the dis-possessed resounds memorably with the anger of proud men and women who seek to right two hundred years of injustice. As these poems assert in their stark and discomfiting humanity, people are legends. This is no record of a distant past. In the face of indifference and frustration Kevin Gilbert believes Australia is capable of giving justice to Aboriginals and will do so-"if we can bridge the gap of non-understanding of our situation and rights in the matter". People Are Legends is an attempt to bridge that gap, to show the human side of the question: revealing the deeply hurt personalities, the humour, the loves of people in the language used by living Aboriginals, without editing, without politeness or hypocrisy as practised in "cultured" verse. Kevin Gilbert was born at Condobolin, New South Wales, in 1933. He left school after fifth class primary, and for some years worked as a station hand. In 1957 he was sentenced to life im-prisonment for murder, and spent fourteen and a half years behind bars, five years and seven months of these at the notorious Grafton Goal, intractable section. Prison gave him access to books, and he began writing. With The Cherry Pickers he became the first Aboriginal playwright, and his poems were published in a limited edition. After his release he wrote Because a White Man'll Never Do It, of which Stewart Harris said: "This book is the first work by an Aboriginal politician and it's a fine wise thing, which thunders with anger, shines with truth and sings with a sweet compassion..." In 1978 he followed this work with Living Black. Of his present situation Kevin Gilbert writes: "Now working as a nursery man and art gallery proprieter to gain finance to adver-tise the Aboriginal cause and one day, hopefully, to gain the freedom to further my playwriting and art."