Swimmer in the Dust

About the Author

Ross Gillett is a multi-award winning poet who lives in Daylesford on Dja Dja Wurrung country in the Central Highlands of Victoria. His poems have appeared in The Age, The Australian and The Canberra Times, in journals in Australia and the US and three times in Black Inc's The Best Australian Poems. His book The Sea Factory was one of the Five Islands Press New Poets 2006 series. In 2010 he published a chapbook of old and new poems - Wundawax and other poems - with Mark Time Books. His book The Mirror Hurlers was published by Puncher and Wattmann in 2019, and his next collection, Swimmer in the Dust, will be released by the same publisher in mid-2022.

His awards include the Broadway Poetry Prize, the FAW John Shaw Neilson Award (twice), the Melbourne Poet's Union Poetry Prize, the City of Greater Dandenong National Poetry Prize, the Woorilla Poetry Prize and the Newcastle Poetry Prize. He has been twice shortlisted for both the Blake Poetry Prize, and the Peter Porter Poetry Prize, and in 2021 was shortlisted for the Bridport and ACU poetry prizes.

Ross convenes a weekly poetry workshop in Daylesford and is poetry editor for Puncher and Wattmann. His previous career was with the Victorian Public Service, for which he worked in a wide range of departments and roles, finishing as a project manager for the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning in Ballarat and Daylesford, where he specialised in the implementation of native title agreements.