Adam Aitken

Adam Aitken was born in London in 1960. He spent some of his childhood with relatives in Thailand, and was educated at a convent in Malaysia, before coming to live in Sydney, Australia in 1968. His father is Anglo-Australian and his mother is Thai.[1]

Aitken began writing in the mid-1970s and majored in English and Art Film History at the University of Sydney. He has also completed a Master's in linguistics and a Doctorate in Creative Arts from the Centre for New Writing, University of Technology, Sydney. His doctoral thesis was titled "Writing the hybrid: Asian imaginaries in Australian literature".[2] He was associate poetry editor for HEAT magazine.[3]

Aitken has published seven major collections in Australia, is featured in numerous poetry anthologies, and has published his poems in many Australian and international literary journals. He is considered to be a poet of no particular school or trend, postmodern and lyrical at the same time. His influences range from the English Romantic to the French, American and British avante-garde, especially the New York School of poets. Aitken's poems "fulfill the old Horatian ideal of both teaching and delighting".[4]

In 1996, his second poetry collection In One House was considered one of the best poetry collections of that year. In 2001, his third collection Romeo and Juliet in Subtitles, was shortlisted for the John Bray South Australian Literary Festival Award, and was runner-up for The Age Book of the Year poetry prize. In 2009, his fourth collection, Eighth Habitation, was published by Giramondo Press and shortlisted for the 2010 John Bray Award.[5] In 2018, Aitken's collection Archipelago (2017) was shortlisted for the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry.

His writing shows a deep interest in contemporary cultural issues, especially issues of identity, family connections, and cultural hybridity.[6][7] Adam's work has been translated into French, Swedish, German, Polish, Malay, Mandarin and Russian, and is published internationally, most notably in Poetry Magazine. He has also served as editor of the Contemporary Asian Australian Poets anthology.[8]

Aitken's next collection will be a "poetic treatment of the current social politics" of a particular village in France.[9]

• Letter to Marco Polo, Island Press, 1985
• In One House, HarperCollins/Paper Bark Press, 1996
• Romeo And Juliet in Subtitles, Brandl & Schlesinger, 2000
• Eighth Habitation, Giramondo Publishing, 2009
• Tonto's Revenge, TinFish Press, 2011
• (As co-editor) Contemporary Asian Australian Poets, Puncher and Wattmann, 2013. Edited by Adam Aitken, Kim Cheng Boey and Michelle Cahill.
• One Hundred Letters Home, Vagabond Press, 2016
• Archipelago, Vagabond Press, 2017
• (chapbook) Notes on the River, Little Window Press, 2017

• Adam Aitken homepage
• Adam Aitken Cambodia blog
• Line and Space Lecture
• Interview and reading of 'Costumes'
• Adam Aitkin at Australia Poetry International Web
• Three poems at Jacket
• Five poems at Lyrikline.org