Scott was born in Littlehampton[1] in Sussex, England, migrating to Australia during his childhood and residing mainly in Melbourne since 1959.

[2] He attended Monash University, where he was a contemporary of fellow poets Alan Wearne and Laurie Duggan.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, his work developed in an 'experimental' direction unusual in Australian poetry, owing partly to his interest in translation.

This change was occasioned in part by an Australia Council studio fellowship in Paris which he shared with the Australian novelist Mark Henshaw.

He has taught in the Faculty of Creative Arts at Wollongong University but now writes full-time.