Peter Porter is often described as an Australian poet living in London. The insistence on his Australian origins may seem odd considering that he sailed to England in 1951 when he was twenty-two, and, except for visits to his homeland at different times and travels elsewhere (mainly in Europe), he has lived in London ever since. London has been an important base for the development of Porter's poetry and literary journalism, but an inherent sense of exile finds an objective correlative in the writer's sense of separation from his homeland. However, this sense of exile does not arise from a simple romantic nostalgia: a complex, ironic, and often humorous worldview emerges in Porter's poetry, marking him as one of the leading English-language poets in the world.

Peter Neville Frederick Porter was born on 16 February 1929 in Brisbane, Queensland, to William Ronald and Marion (Main) Porter. The critical event of Porter's...