Ross_Donlon

Born in Ashfield, Sydney and now living in  Castlemaine, Victoria, Ross Donlon has published five collections of poetry and a number of chapbooks. First published in The Bulletin in his teens, he enjoyed (you might say) a long break of over thirty years before publishing again, a second budding, as Judith Rodriguez once said. 

After many years of travel and working at all sorts before arriving at teaching (state secondary and some tertiary), he is now mostly retired and travelling again. Happily, he has featured at some poetry and arts festivals in various parts of Australia as well as in Europe, and has spent considerable time in Norway, a country with a society and political system close to his heart.

Active in Castlemaine arts, he convened literary components of three state festivals and has run poetry readings for many years. These feature local, Melbourne, interstate and even some international poets, such as English poet Chrys Salt, in 2019, and Scot, Hugh McMillan slated for 2021, but who knows whether Hugh will make it.

As publisher of Mark Time Books, he acted as editor for a number of leading Australian poets, and lately two poets in the U.K.

A program on the now lost Radio National program, Poetica, was devoted to a sequence of poems about his father, a U.S, serviceman he never met. A beautiful production.

He has been lately featured on Zoom readings at events from Scotland, England and Nashville, Tennessee.

Ross’s own poetry has received favourable reviews in national newspapers in Australia if not literary journals – he’s that kind of poet.

He would add a pic here if he knew how. Great to otherwise be a part of the Flying Islands experience.

His Flying Islands pocketbook is, The Bread Horse, which features his own etching. ‘The First Horse’ on the cover.