John Mateer

John Mateer (born 1971) is a South African-born Australian poet and author.

He was born in Roodepoort, South Africa in 1971, and grew up on the outskirts of Johannesburg. He spent some of his childhood in Canada, before returning to South Africa in 1979. In 1989 he moved to Australia with his family. He attended the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. Since then, he has lived in Melbourne and Perth.

Mateer has published several collections of poems. "Barefoot Speech" won the 2001 C. J. Dennis Prize for Poetry and "Loanwords" was shortlisted for the 2002 Western Australian Premier's Book Awards. He was also a recipient of the Centenary Medal for his contributions to Australian literature.

He has read his work at poetry festivals in Asia and Europe, and most recently in Japan and in Malaysia. His works have been translated into Japanese and Portuguese. Mateer was granted a fellowship to travel to Indonesia, and later published a non-fiction travelogue entitled "Semar's Cave: an Indonesian Journal".

On his book "The Ancient Capital of Images", David Burleigh of "The Japan Times" writes: “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 J.M. Coetzee. The poems are inquisitorial, ethically preoccupied and sometimes powerfully intense.”

His latest publications are a book of poems about the Portuguese Empire, "Southern Barbarians" (Johannesburg: The Zero Press, 2007) and a selection from more than a decade's work, "Elsewhere" (Cambridge, UK: Salt Publishing, forthcoming).

Works

Poetry
* "Anachronism"
* "Barefoot Speech"
* "Burning Swans"
* "Loanwords"
* "The Ancient Capital of Images"
* "Southern Barbarians"
* "Elsewhere"

Travel
*"Semar's Cave: an Indonesian Journal"

Persondata
NAME=Mateer, John
ALTERNATIVE NAMES=
SHORT DESCRIPTION=Contemporary Australian poet
DATE OF BIRTH=1971
PLACE OF BIRTH=Roodepoort, South Africa
DATE OF DEATH=
PLACE OF DEATH=