Peter Bakowski Peter Bakowski i(A3878 works by) (a.k.a. Peter Paul Bakowski)
Born: Established: 1954 Carlton, Parkville - Carlton area, Melbourne - North, Melbourne, Victoria, ;
Gender: Male
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BiographyHistory

Of Polish-German ancestry, Peter Bakowski was born premature with a hole in the heart. At the age of eighteen Bakowski read the poetry of Jack Kerouac. Influenced by Kerouac's poems he travelled overseas in the 1980s. Around 1983 he began to write poetry. After his return to Australia, Bakowski lived in Melbourne while continuing to travel overseas including to London and Rome, where he was Poet in Residence at the Australian studio in 1997. In 1993 he had an operation to replace a failing mitral valve in his heart.

Apart from publications in both national and international literary magazines, Bakowski has also published volumes of verse. In 2006 he commenced preparation of a collection of portrait poems of real and imagined people and undertook the presentation of his poetry in private houses to audiences of eight or more.

In 2007 he was Asialink Writer-in-Residence in the English Department at the University of Macau. He has also been writer-in-residence at the B.R. Whiting Library (Rome), the Cite Internationale des Arts (Paris), the Katherine Susannah Prichard Writers’ Centre (Greenmount, Western Australia), the Hobart Writer’s Cottage (Battery Point, Tasmania), 'Bundanon' (the Arthur Boyd Estate, near Nowra, New South Wales), and the Broken Hill Poetry Festival (New South Wales).

By 2017, Bakwoski had published nine collections of poetry, including the French-English bilingual collection Le cœur à trois heures du matin (France, 2015).

Most Referenced Works

Personal Awards

2007 recipient Asialink Arts Exchanges Program For travel to Macau University to write poems based on his direct observation and experience of the physical, intellectual and commercial environments of Macau and Mainland China.
2006 Australia Council Literature Board Grants Grants for Established Writers $60,000 for poetry writing

Awards for Works

y separately published work icon Beneath Our Armour Melbourne : Hunter Publishers , 2009 Z1596565 2009 selected work poetry 'Beneath Our Armour's portrait poems cover vast tracts of history, geography, and personae in a way that is at once intimate and epic. Intimate, because Bakowski imagines his way into the lives of people as radically disparate as Cyril Connolly, Diego Rivera, Sylvia Plath, and Elizabeth Smart. Epic, because he transports us from Old Macau to Bedford Square London, and even Lower Templestowe, and from pitched battles to civilised dinner parties.' (From the publisher's website.)
2010 shortlisted Victorian Premier's Literary Awards Prize for Poetry
Portrait of Leonard Drysdale, Clerk of Birmingham, England, 1946 i "Ever punctual I stride", 2006 single work poetry
— Appears in: Eureka Street , 3 May vol. 17 no. 8 2007;
2006 winner Shoalhaven Literary Award for Poetry
y separately published work icon In the Human Night Sydney : Hale and Iremonger , 1995 Z239499 1995 selected work poetry
1996 winner Victorian Premier's Literary Awards Prize for Poetry
Last amended 31 May 2018 09:58:08
Influence on:
Arts Wednesday Christine Schaeffer , 1998 single work short story
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