Alan Jefferies (born 1957) is an

Australian Australian(s) may refer to: Australia * Australia, a country * Australians, citizens of the Commonwealth of Australia ** European Australians ** Anglo-Celtic Australians, Australians descended principally from British colonists ** Aboriginal A ...

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 ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems ( oral or wri ...

and children's author currently living in

Brisbane Brisbane ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Queensland, and the third-most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of approximately 2.6 million. Brisbane lies at the centre of the South ...

Biography

Alan Jefferies grew up in

Cleveland Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...

on the

Queensland ) , nickname = Sunshine State , image_map = Queensland in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of Queensland in Australia , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Australia , established_title = Before federation , establishe ...

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 An institute of technology (also referred to as: technological university, technical university, university of technology, technological educational institute, technical college, polytechnic university or just polytechnic) is an institution of te ...

, Sydney and for many years worked as a librarian and teacher at the

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, Sydney. Between 1982 and 1992 he lived in

Coalcliff Coalcliff is a town on the coast of New South Wales, Australia, between Sydney and Wollongong. History In 1796 William Clark and others trekking north to Port Jackson from the wrecked ship '' Sydney Cove'' noticed coal exposed at the cliffs ...

south of Sydney in
house
which was a meeting place for writers, poets, artists and musicians.
(Coalcliff days) 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 Lan Kwai Fong (often abbreviated as LKF) is a small square of streets in Central, Hong Kong. The area was dedicated to hawkers before the Second World War, but underwent a renaissance in the mid-1980s. It is now a popular expatriate haunt ...

District on Hong Kong Island. 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

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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