John Kinsella was born in Perth, Western Australia. His mother was a poet and he began writing poetry as a child. He cites Judith Wright among his early influences. Before becoming a full-time writer, teacher and editor he worked in a variety of places, including laboratories, a fertiliser factory and on farms.He has published over thirty books and his many awards include The Grace Leven Poetry Prize and the John Bray Award for Poetry. His poems have appeared in journals such as Stand, The Times Literary Supplement, The Kenyon Review, and Antipodes. His poetry collections include: Poems 1980-1994; The Silo; The Undertow: New & Selected Poems; Visitants (1999); Wheatlands (with Dorothy Hewett, 2000); and The Hierarchy of Sheep (2001). His most recent book, Peripheral Light: New & Selected Poems, includes an introduction by Harold Bloom and his next poetry collection, The New Arcadia, was published in June 2005.Kinsella is a vegan and has written about the ethics of vegetarianism. IN 2001, he published a book of autobiographical writing called Auto. He has also written plays, short stories and the novel Genre. Kinsella has taught a Cambridge University where he is a Fellow Churchill College and was formerly Professor of English at Kenyon College, Ohio, where he was the Richard L Thomas Professor of Creative Writing in 2001.Kinsella is a founding editory of the literary journal Salt and international editor of The Kenhyon Review. He co-edited a special issue on Australian poetry for the American journal Poetry and various other issues of international journals. He is a poetry critic for The Observer.