He was educated at the University of Melbourne where he received the chancellor's prize in 2004 for his PhD in Italian Literature.

The mood of his Italian landscapes reminds me of the modem Italian poet Eugenio Montale, just as his two poems after Guido Cavalcanti, along with the imagist lyrics that follow, call up the figure of Ezra Pound, that passionate disciple of Italy."

Later he writes, "West's graphic power is wonderful, so that you feel, in all of his language moments, of this world.

"[4] Reviewing the 2019 Carol and Ahoy, Duwell is puzzled why West should abandon the intense lyricism of his first three books for an “utterly different” mode of “post-Romantic ambulatory meditation”.

Paul Kane writes that Simon West reads in the Keats–Shelley House, Rome, 21 July 2012.