John Mateer

John Mateer was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. He has published five books of poems and a prose travelogue on Indonesia with Fremantle Press. He has given readings of his work at poetry festivals in Europe, Asia, Australia and South Africa. Selections of his poems have been translated into Japanese, Indonesian, Portuguese and German. Of his work The Japan Times has written: ‘Mateer’s manner and the complex resonances of his work reminded me a little of the prose of his compatriot, the Nobel-prize-winning novelist JM Coetzee. The poems are inquisitorial, ethically preoccupied and sometimes powerfully intense.’

Awards

Winner, Victorian Premier’s Prize for Poetry, Centenary Medal, 2001

Books available from Fremantle Press

• The West 2010
• Ancient Capital of Images, The 2005
• Semar's Cave 2004
• Loanwords 2002
• Barefoot Speech 2000
• Anachronism 1997
• Burning Swans 1994