Alex Skovron was born in Poland, lived briefly in Israel, and migrated to Australia in 1958. His family settled in Sydney, where he grew up and completed his studies. From the early 1970s he worked as a book editor in Sydney and (after 1980) Melbourne. His poetry has appeared widely in Australia and overseas, and he has received a number of major awards, including the Wesley Michel Prize, the John Shaw Neilson Award, the ABR (now Peter Porter) Prize, and for his first book, The Rearrangement (1988), the Anne Elder and Mary Gilmore awards. His previous collection, Towards the Equator: New & Selected Poems (2014), was shortlisted in the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards. Alex’s work has been translated into several languages. His book of short stories The Man who Took to his Bed (2017), and his novella The Poet (2005, joint winner of the FAW Christina Stead Award for fiction), are available in Czech translations; The Attic, a selection of his poetry translated into French, was published in 2013, and a bilingual volume of Chinese translations, Water Music, in 2017. He has also collaborated with his Czech translator, Josef Tomáš, on English translations of the twentieth-century Czech poets Jiří Orten and Vladimír Holan. Alex`s numerous public readings include appearances in China, Serbia, India, Ireland, Macedonia, Portugal, and Norfolk Island. An 80-minute CD in which he reads from his work was published in 2019 under the title Towards the Equator.
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