Powell was born in Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia on 16 November 1940.
He spent the remainder of his life in Sydney, Australia where he was a psychoanalyst in private practice and a visiting medical officer in Mental Health, at the Prince of Wales Hospital.
In 2011, he fell, resulting in traumatic brain injury that forced him to retire from psychoanalysis and poetry, though his existing work is sometimes included in collections.
He won the 1983 Mattara Newcastle Poetry Prize[2] and was a co-winner of the 45th International Poetry Competition (1989) organized by the Quarterly Review of Literature, Princeton, New Jersey.
Powell died at Ryde, New South Wales, Australia on 29 August 2022.