Editor (Australia)
Michael Brennan was born in Sydney, Australia in 1973. He graduated from the University of Sydney with a Bachelor of Arts (First Class Honours & University Medal) in 1996 and completed a Doctorate of Philosophy there in 2001, undertaking a comparative literary analysis of the function of negativity in poetic language and ontology as presented in nineteenth-century French Symbolism and contemporary Australian poetry. He has taught courses in creative writing, poetics and literary theory at the University of Technology, Sydney, and Australian literature at the University of Sydney. Brennan edited Absence & Negativity in Australian Literature (1999), co-edited Calyx: 30 Contemporary Australian Poets (2000) and published The Imageless World (2003), Language habits (2006) and Sky was sky (with Tokyo-based installation artist Akiko Muto; translated by Yasuhiro Yotsumoto, 2007). His first collection of poetry, The Imageless World (Salt Publishing, 2003) was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Award for Poetry, won the Mary Gilmore Award, and was described in the Australian Book Review as “an astonishingly beautiful work. In years to come, it will surely be seen as one of the most important debuts of this generation of poets”. In 2006, Brennan undertook residencies in Berlin and Paris thanks to the Marten Bequest Travelling Scholarships, the Literature Board of the Australian Council for the Arts, and the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris. He is a lecturer in the Faculty of Policy Studies, Chuo University, Tokyo, and director of the small independent publisher, Vagabond Press. His second full-length collection of poetry, Unanimous Night, is forthcoming from Salt Publishing (UK).
email: australia AT poetryinternational DOT org
