Grant Caldwell

Born in Melbourne in 1947, Grant Caldwell completed an economics degree and teaching certificate at the University of Melbourne in 1970 and worked as a secondary teacher for three years. In the early 1970s he lived and worked as an accountant in London, UK.

for two years, and then in North Africa and Ibiza (Spain) where he devoted his time to writing poetry and fiction. He returned to Melbourne in 1977 and then lived in Sydney for 15 years where he continued to devote his time to his writing. He returned to Melbourne again in 1992 and continued with his writing. He began teaching Creative Writing part time at the University of Melbourne in 1995 and continued to do so continually until being given 0.4 tenure in 2004; then full-time tenure in 2008. His creative work: poetry, stories and extended narratives, have been published widely in Australia since the early 70s, as well as in Canada, China, Colombia, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, New Zealand and U.S.A. He has had twelve books published, eight collections of poetry, two novels, a collection of short stories and a critical monograph, as well as a cassette recording of his poetry. His latest books are a novel "Love & Derangement" (Arcadia: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2014) and "Reflections of a Temporary Self: New & Selected Poems" (Collective Effort Press/Trojan Press, 2015) and "Intention and Unintention or the Hyperconscious in Contemporary Lyric Impulse" (Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2018). His work has been translated into Bengali, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish and Arabic. He has received two Australia Council Established Writer Fellowships, and two Arts Victoria Grants. His books have been nominated for the Age Book of the Year Award, and a Human Rights Award. He was the Managing Editor of the Australian Poetry Centre's refereed national poetry journal Blue Dog from 2007 to 2010; he was an inaugural board member of the Australian Poetry Centre, and a committee member of the successful Melbourne UNESCO City of Literature Bid in 2007/8, and the Steering Committee for the Centre for Books, Writing and Ideas (Wheeler Centre). He completed an MA by Research in English at the University of Melbourne in 2004, and a doctorate in Creative Writing at Deakin University in 2012. He has published articles in journals in Australia, Canada, Japan (in English with Japanese translation) and India. He has represented Australia at international poetry festivals in China, Colombia, New Zealand and Japan. He was head of the Creative Writing program for 3 years and currently coordinates MA in Creative Writing Publishing and Editing minor thesis.