[5] Thorne had been writer-in-residence with a number of organisations, including the Miscellaneous Workers Union and the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, and had worked as a poet in schools, universities and prisons.
In 2002, he was editor of the Launceston Longpoem, a web-based community writing project funded through Tasmanian Regional Arts.
He was instrumental in establishing the Vietnam Moratorium protests in Launceston in 1969, the Northern Tasmanian Unemployed Workers' Union in 1978, Now We the People (Tasmania) in 2000 and the Campaign for a Clean Tamar Valley in 2006.
Thorne lived in Launceston most of his life, apart from short periods in Sydney, New South Wales, and Palo Alto, California.
[8] He also received grants and fellowships from the Australia Council, Arts Tasmania and the Eleanor Dark Foundation.