[1] He studied history at Monash University, where he met the poets Laurie Duggan and John A.
[4] After publishing two collections of poetry, he wrote a verse novel, The Nightmarkets (1986), which won the Australian Book Council Banjo Award[5] and was adapted for performance with Monash University Student Theatre.
[6] His next book in the same genre, The Lovemakers, won the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry and the NSW Premier's Book of the Year in 2002,[7] as well as the Arts Queensland Judith Wright Calanthe Award.
[1] The first half of the novel was published by Penguin, and its second by the ABC in 2004 as The Lovemakers: Book Two, Money and Nothing and co-won The Foundation for Australian Literary Studies' Colin Roderick Award[8] and the H. T. Priestly Medal.
Despite this critical success neither book was promoted properly and both volumes ended up being pulped.