Porter, Peter Neville Frederick

(1929- )

   Born in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, he left school at 18, then worked as a newspaper reporter and in a Brisbane warehouse before sailing for England in 1951. In England he worked in bookselling and advertising before becoming a freelance writer and broadcaster in 1968, working as poetry critic for The Observer. He was associated with poets in "The Group" (see entries for Martin Bell and Philip Hobsbaum). He has frequently returned to Australia, and in 2001 he traveled to Melbourne for the premiere of his The Voice of Love, a song cycle with music by the British composer Nicholas Maw. He is visiting professor of poetry at Nottingham Trent University. He has been awarded six major literary awards, including the Gold Medal for Australian Literature (1990) and Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (2002). He holds honorary doctorates from four universities. Some of his publications: Once Bitten, Twice Bitten, 1961. Poems, Ancient and Modern, 1964. The Last of England, 1970. The Chair of Babel, 1992. Afterburner, 2004. Some of his poems: "An Australian Garden," "Annotations of Auschwitz," "Returning," "Rimbaud's Ostrich," "The Sanitized Sonnets."

   Sources: British Council Arts (http://www.contemporarywriters.com). Dr. Peter Porter, Poet-Alumni at the University of Queensland (http://www.alumni.uq.edu.au/?page=17162&pid=273). Jacket 16, Peter Porter, Two Poems (http://jacketmagazine.com/16/porter-peter.html). Portraits of Poets. Sebastian Barker, ed. Carcanet, 1986. The Bloodaxe Book of Modern Australian Poetry. John Tranter, and Philip Mead, ed. Bloodaxe Books, 1991, 1994. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Faber Book of Modern Australian Verse. Vincent Buckley, ed. Faber and Faber, 1991. The Faber Book of Modern Verse. 4th ed., revised by Peter Porter. Michael Roberts, ed. Faber and Faber, 1982. The National Portrait Gallery (www.npg.org.uk). The Oxford Book of Comic Verse. John Gross, ed. Oxford University Press, 1994. The Oxford Book of TwentiethCentury English Verse. Philip Larkin, ed. Oxford University Press, 1973. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. The Penguin Book of Light Verse. Gavin Ewart, ed. Penguin Books, 1980. Who's Who. London: A & C Black, 2005.