Timoshenko Aslanides

Biography

Timoshenko Aslanides was born on Christmas Eve, 1943, in the Crown Street Women's Hospital, in Sydney, to John Paul Aslanides (1901-1962), a 1925 immigrant to Australia from the Greek community in Kerasus (on the Black Sea coast) and Olive Emma Browne (1910-1993), daughter of a pastoralist family from Lockhart, New South Wales. Aslanides graduated BA (Music) from the University of Sydney in 1967 and B.Ec from the Australian National University in 1976.

He began writing poetry after he moved to Canberra in 1972, where he joined the Australian Public Service. His first book of poems, The Greek Connection, won him the British Commonwealth Poetry Prize for 1978 for the best first book of poetry in English published the previous year in the British Commonwealth excluding England; he was the first Australian to win this prize.

He has since produced 13 books. His fourth book of poetry, Australian Things, was awarded joint second prize in the 1988 bicentennial poetry awards for book-length collections. This book was inspired by a remark, in a conversation with his mentor, by Judith Wright, who had written to him in November 1979, inviting him to lunch at her bush-cottage retreat near Braidwood, in southern New South Wales. Aslanides regards the subsequent and enduring friendship with Judith Wright as both an apprenticeship as well as a rewarding artistic relationship for both poets.

Because he is Australian-born and Australian-focussed and, since July 1985, a full-time professional Australian poet, he does not (and never has) identified as an "ethnic" poet; nor does he write "multicultural" poetry. Though he feels that most, if not all of his poetry has its origin in love, the context of this affection is the celebration of the natural and built environments of Australia, and the history and imaginative genius of the people.

Timoshenko Aslanides has worked as a full-time, professional poet since July 1985, when he resigned from the Public Service.

Awards

Publications