Les Wicks

Early life and education

Wicks grew up in western suburbs Sydney.

Wicks studied a Bachelor of Arts in History over some years at Macquarie University as well as worked a variety of unskilled and semi-skilled jobs while living in Sydney and London.

In the late 1970s, he embarked on his first publishing exercise – Meuse publications (with Bill Farrow) which was a high-water mark in Australian poetry publishing with its cutting edge mix of text and graphics. He helped set up the Poets Union in NSW. From the 1980s, he worked as a union industrial advocate for a number of Unions after obtaining a Graduate Diploma in Industrial Law from the University of Sydney.

Literary career

He has been a guest at most of Australia's literary festivals, toured widely and been published in over 350 different newspapers, anthologies and magazines across 24 countries in 12 languages. During September/October 2006, Les Wicks was a guest of the Festival International de la Poesie in Quebec, Canada. In 2011 he was the 1st Australian guest at the International Literary Festival, Lviv, Ukraine. 2013 saw him as a guest at the International Poetry Festival of Medellin. 2014 he performed in Delhi World Poetry Festival, LA – Beyond Baroque, Austin International Poetry Festival & Struga Poetry Evenings. 2015 saw him performing at Festival Internacional de Poesía, Granada Nicaragua & International Poetry Festival Istanbul.

2016 saw publication of Getting By Not fitting In ( Island Press (Australia), 2016) El Asombrado" (Rochford St, 2015) is his 12th title, a selection of poems from the previous 15 years in Spanish and English (translated by G Leogena).

Wicks' 11th title has enjoyed critical attention. Sea of Heartbeak (Unexpected Resilience) ( Puncher & Wattmann, 2013) has many, often personal, dark moments but has a core focus of hope."... an odyssey buoyed by hope and reckless humour." Rebecca Kylie Law, Rochford St Review "…is determined to take the reader on a dive beneath. It took me on a voyage which I found bracing and stimulating at the same time as it did not turn away from the discomforting reality of the costs our lives inflict on our futures." Rae Desmond Jones, "Les Wicks has a capacity to invest ordinary truisms with moral and metaphysical nuances…these are tip-of-the-iceberg poems – a surface you can see and admire, but with hidden depths that are both wonderful and disturbing." David Gilbey, ABC Radio "...the mixture of prawn-on-the-barbie, stale beer and thongs suburban, with a sophisticated lyricism and openness to nature... harvesting poetic truffles; line after line seems to have arrived entire." John Watson, Southerly

Barking Wings (PressPress, 2012) is assertive. Mark Roberts wrote "...image piled up on image, words and sounds crashing to together and, even when we can see ‘blue sky’ for a few lines, we are always aware that another surprise is only a line break away". Shadows of the Read was published in 2011 (Krok) featuring work in both English & Ukrainian.

His fifth book of poems, The Ways of Waves (Sidewalk, 2000) celebrates the Australian summer. Number six, Appetites of Light (PressPress, 2002), is an exploration of the qualities of light, while the seventh takes readers to "peopled landscapes"... Stories of the Feet (Five Islands, 2004). The Ambrosiacs (Island Press (Australia), 2009) concerns “endings”- an elegy - from ecology under stress to the loss of close friends. Wicks explores a sequence of endpoints: spiritual exploration, suburbia, rural escapes and travel...all with his typical raw honesty, humour and rage. A startling, and ultimately affirming picture of generations and lives. Joanne Burns writes of "the Ambrosiacs" "…intense, quite relentless, often dark and pessimistic. But this of course is not the whole story, for within these pages are striking moments of grace, awareness, acceptance, restitution…". Much of the work in later books features what Wicks describes as "this waterwall, an alluvion". Through building layers of proposition, assertion, voice & imagery a broader picture is created.

Stylistically, he spans both a vernacular performance poetry and more linguistically dense, often dark explorations. He is hard hitting and humorous.

Other projects include publishing and editing poetry outreach like Artransit which put poetry and art into Sydney & Newcastle (NSW) buses and Heritage Light which saw a poem published on the surface of the Parramatta River. E-books have explored Sydney beaches & Broken Hill through words & photography. In association with Krok Publishing the first anthology of contemporary Ukrainian & Australian poets in English & Ukrainian was published - AU/UA: Contemporary Poetry of Ukraine and Australia. He runs workshop programs across Australia called Plan to Be Published & Intense.

Awards