John Tranter spent his youth on a farm on the South-east coast of
Australia, attended country schools, and took his BA in 1970 after
attending university sporadically. He has worked mainly in publishing and
radio production for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and has
travelled widely, making reading tours of the United States, England and
Europe. He has lived at various times in Melbourne, Singapore, Brisbane and
London, and now lives in Sydney.
He has received several senior fellowships and other grants from the
Literature Board of the Australia Council, and a visiting residency at
Cambridge University in 2001 and 2002. Sixteen collections of his verse
have been published, including The Floor of Heaven, a book-length
sequence of four verse narratives (HarperCollins 1992 and Arc, UK, 2001),
Gasoline Kisses (Equipage, Cambridge, 1997), Late Night Radio (Polygon,
Edinburgh, 1998), Different Hands, a collection of seven experimental prose
pieces (Folio/Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1998), and Heart Print (Salt
Publishing, UK, 2000). His work also appears in the Norton Anthology of Modern
Poetry.
In 1992 he edited (with Philip Mead) the Penguin Book of Modern Australian
Poetry, a 470-page anthology which has become the standard text in its
field, published in Britain and the USA as the Bloodaxe Book of Modern
Australian Poetry.
He is the editor of the free Internet magazine
Jacket.
A Sample of John Tranter's work follows. You can find more
of is work and information about the poet by following the links provided at the
end of this document.
