Cirrus@Austlit

The son of a Greek father (John Paul Aslanides) and an Australian mother (Olive Emma Browne) Timoshenko Aslanides graduated in music from the University of Sydney and in economics from ANU. He began writing poetry in 1975 and was a full-time professional poet from 1985.

Aslanides acknowledged 'the importance to [his] writing of the friendship with, and mentorship provided by, Judith Wright during the last twenty years of her life' and commented that his 'poems define Australian mythologies. They also celebrate the achievement of great Australians and connect these and other people with large and significant issues ... [My] poetry asserts the significance of love, work and the family in the pursuit of happiness, demonstrates the imaginative genius of the people, vindicates Canberra as national capital and connects it with a wider community in which are described some of the enormous range and diversity of the flora, fauna and natural and built environments of Australia.' (Correspondence with the author, January 2005).

As well as his listed poetry collections, Aslanides wrote, with his wife Jenny Stewart as co-author, two guidebooks, Goulburn and Environs (Olive Press, 1983) and Canberra and the ACT (Kangaroo Press, 1988), and published Twenty-Two Balmain Crescent, Acton: The Story of a House and Its People (ANU Parents-on-Campus Childcare Centre, 1991). He won the 1983 National Parks Writers Award (NSW), was joint winner of the Anti-Cancer Council of Victoria Poetry Award in 1998 and won the Canberra Times Artist of the Year Award (2002)