Chris Wallace-Crabbe, poet and essayist, is an Emeritus Professor in The Australian Centre, University of Melbourne. Born in 1934 to a journalist and a pianist, he grew up with a family tradition of military-bohemian Scots. On leaving school he worked at such jobs as cadet metallurgist and electrical trade journalist before finding his metier as poet and as a university teacher. He has lived in Britain, the United States and Italy, as well as in his natal Melbourne, has taught at Harvard and read his poems all round the world. Wallace-Crabbe has published a dozen books of poetry, plus prose works, art criticism and varied anthologies. For diversion he walks, draws and plays tennis.