Alan Jefferies (born 1957) is an Australian

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator (thought, thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral t ...

and children's author currently living in

Brisbane Brisbane ( ; ) is the List of Australian capital cities, capital and largest city of the States and territories of Australia, state of Queensland and the list of cities in Australia by population, third-most populous city in Australia, with a ...

Biography

Alan Jefferies grew up in

Cleveland Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located along the southern shore of Lake Erie, it is situated across the Canada–U.S. maritime border and approximately west of the Ohio-Pennsylvania st ...

on the

Queensland Queensland ( , commonly abbreviated as Qld) is a States and territories of Australia, state in northeastern Australia, and is the second-largest and third-most populous state in Australia. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Austr ...

coast. He published his first poems in 1976 and since then his work has appeared in magazines and newspapers in Australia and overseas. He holds degrees in Communication and Writing from the University of Technology,

Sydney Sydney is the capital city of the States and territories of Australia, state of New South Wales and the List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city in Australia. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Syd ...

and for many years worked as a librarian and teacher at the Workers’ Educational Association, Sydney. Between 1982 and 1992 he lived in Coalcliff south of Sydney in a house which was a meeting place for writers, poets, artists and musicians. In 1998 he moved to Hong Kong where he lived for almost ten years. He was one of the initiators of a spoken word event called OutLoud, which takes place on the first Wednesday of each month at the Fringe Club in the Lan Kwai Fong District on

Hong Kong Island Hong Kong Island () is an island in the southern part of Hong Kong. The island, known originally and on road signs simply as "Hong Kong", had a population of 1,289,500 and a population density of , . It is the second largest island in Hong Kon ...

. In 2002 he co-edited an anthology of work from the readings called ''Outloud: an anthology of poetry from OutLoud readings''. He has published six books of poetry in Australia including ''Blood Angels: Poems 1976-1999'' (Cerberus, 1997). In October 2004 his bilingual children's book ''The crocodile who wanted to be famous'', based on the real-life crocodile ( Pui Pui) that visited Hong Kong, was published and attracted widespread interest from both the Chinese and English press. His most recent book "in the same breath" was published by Flying Islands in 2021. His work has also been translated into Arabic, Romanian and Uzbec. The poet Ken Bolton has recently written that Jefferies' poems "continue to evince a kind of spiritual, slightly mystical openness or suggestibility in a language that is demotic, cool-ly neutral: epiphany with no signs of struggle or effortfulness, no rhetorical war-dance".

Bibliography

Poetry * ''Among the living''. (Glandular, 1980) * ''High Jinx''. (Transit, 1983) * ''Writing from a bankrupt 13th principle''.(Illustrated by Auguste Blackman) (Third Degree, 1990) * ''Blood Angels: Poems 1976-1999''. (Cerberus, 1997) * ''Homage and other poems''. (Chameleon, 2006) * ''Seem''. (translated by Iris Fan Xing) (Association of Stories in Macao and Flying Island Books, 2011) * ''in the same breath''. (Flying Island Books, 2021) For children * ''The Crocodile who Wanted to be Famous''. (Sixth Finger, 2004) * ''Well done, Max!'' (Longman Asia, 2004) * ''What is the cat doing?'' (Longman Asia, 2004) * ''A magic wish'' (Longman Asia, 2004)

References

External links

Cha: An Asian Literary Journal (May 2009)Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, (December 2017)
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Jefferies, Alan 1957 births Australian children's writers Australian poets Living people Australian expatriates in Hong Kong Hong Kong poets People from Redland City