John Tranter was born in Cooma, Australia, in 1943 and grew up on his parents’ farm on the south coast of New South Wales. In the 1960s he started writing poetry and his work was published in different magazines before his first poetry volume ‘Parallax’ appeared in 1970. From the end of the 1960s to the early 1970s he worked for various radio stations in Australia, London and Singapore including as programme producer for the Australian radio channel ABC. During the 1980s he taught as guest lecturer at various Australian universities where he mainly gave classes in creative writing. Tranter regularly writes for several literary magazines and newspapers and has published poetry anthologies such as ‘The Penguin Book of Modern Australian Poetry’ (1991).
John Tranter has published several collections of lyric poetry, including ‘Selected Poems’ (1983), ‘The Floor of Heaven’ (1992) and ‘Late Night Radio’ (1998). In 1997 he founded the independent Internet literary magazine ‘jacket’ which has already won several prizes including the ‘Encyclopaedia Britannica Internet Guide Award’ in 2000.
Tranter initiated APRIL (Australian Poetry Resources Internet Library) in 2004. He was awarded the Australian Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry for ‘Heart Print’ (2001) and received the Victorian Premier for ‘Urban Myths’ (2006). John Tranter lives in Sydney.
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