Christopher Wallace-Crabbe

Chris Wallace-Crabbe AM was born in 1934. After leaving school he worked at the Royal Mint, Melbourne, then at diverse jobs. After graduating, he became Lockie Fellow in Australian Literature and Creative Writing at Melbourne University. Over the next decades he became Reader in English, and then held a Personal Chair from 1988. He was Harkness Fellow at Yale, 1965-67, Professor of Australian Studies at Harvard, 1987-8, and Visiting Professor at the University of Venice, 1973 and 2005. A first book of poems was published in Australia in 1959, but in the eighties he began publishing with OUP, with The Amorous Cannibal. Along with many readings of his poetry in Australia, India, Europe, and North America, his most recent books include Telling a Hawk from a Handsaw and, this year, New and Selected Poems, both from Carcanet Oxford Poets. He draws, paints a little and writes art criticism.