John Alan Scott (born 23 April 1948) is an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

-Australian poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

, novelist and academic.
Scott was born in Littlehampton

Littlehampton

Littlehampton is a seaside resort town and civil parish in the Arun District of West Sussex, England, on the east bank at the mouth of the River Arun. It lies south southwest of London, west of Brighton and east of the county town of Chichester....

 in Sussex

Sussex

Sussex , from the Old English Sūþsēaxe , is an historic county in South East England corresponding roughly in area to the ancient Kingdom of Sussex. It is bounded on the north by Surrey, east by Kent, south by the English Channel, and west by Hampshire, and is divided for local government into West...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, migrating to Australia during his childhood. Over several books of poetry his work developed in an 'experimental' direction unusual in Australian poetry, owing partly to his interest in translation. Indeed he has translated a volume, Elegies, of the contemporary French poet Emmanuel Hocquard

Emmanuel Hocquard

Emmanuel Hocquard is a French poet who grew up in Tangier, Morocco. He served as the editor of the small press Orange Export Ltd., and, with Claude Royet-Journoud, edited two anthologies of new American poets, 21+1: Poètes américains ď aujourďhui and 49+1...

. However since the 1990s he has concentrated on producing novels. This change was occasioned in part by an Australia Council

Australia Council

The Australia Council, informally known as the Australia Council for the Arts, is the official arts council or arts funding body of the Government of Australia.-Function:...

 studio fellowship in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 which he shared with the Australian novelist Mark Henshaw. His work has won him the Victorian Premier's Award twice, in 1986 and again in 1994. The collection of novellas What I Have Written has been filmed from his own screenplay and he has been translated into French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

, German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 and Slovenian

Slovenian language

Slovene or Slovenian is a South Slavic language spoken by approximately 2.5 million speakers worldwide, the majority of whom live in Slovenia. It is the first language of about 1.85 million people and is one of the 23 official and working languages of the European Union...

. He has taught in the Faculty of Creative Arts at Wollongong University but now writes full-time.

Awards

• 1984: Newcastle Poetry Prize
  Newcastle Poetry Prize
  The Newcastle Poetry Prize is an annual Australian award for poetry. It was established in 1981 as the Mattara Poetry Prize.The Prize began from humble beginnings in September 1980, when Peter Goldman stood in the middle of Civic Park during the Mattara Festival and handed out an anthology of...
  
   for St. Clair
• 1986: C. J. Dennis Prize for Poetry
  C. J. Dennis Prize for Poetry
  The C. J. Dennis Prize for Poetry is awarded annually as part of the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards, for a significant selection of new work by a poet published in a book. It is named after the early twentieth century vernacular poet C. J...
  
   for St. Clair
• 1994: Victorian Premier's Literary Award
  Victorian Premier's Literary Award
  The Victorian Premier's Literary Awards were created by the Victorian Governmentwith the aim of raising the profile of contemporary creative writing and Australia's publishing industry....
  
   for What I Have Written

External links

• Author page - Australian Literary Resources
• Elegy VI by Emmanuel Hocquard, Translation by John A. Scott from French
  French language
  French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
  
  
• Elegy VII by Emmanuel Hocquard, Translation
• Interview with John Scott
• Bestsellerdoom Review of Warra Warra by Don Anderson