TIM THORNE
Background
Tim Thorne, born 1944 in Launceston, has lived in Tasmania for most of his life. Educated at various institutions, including Yolla Area School and Stanford University, he has worked as, among other things, a teacher, storeman, community arts officer, visual arts curator and newspaper columnist, and is currently managing editor of Cornford Press, a publishing enterprise he set up primarily to promote the work of Tasmanian poets.
In 1985 he inaugurated the Tasmanian Poetry Festival, which he directed until 2001 and which incorporates his invention, the Launceston Poetry Cup, a performance poetry concept now imitated all over Australia and internationally.
He has been writer-in-residence with a number of organisations, including the Miscellaneous Workers Union and the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, and has worked as a poet in schools, universities and prisons.
He has been commissioned to write and perform poems for conferences of groups as varied as the Australian Fertiliser Services Asssociation, Australian Pig Breeders and Southern Cross Television Producers. One of his poems is engraved on the wall of the public toilet block in Cressy Tasmania (with official approval).
He has read at literary festivals throughout Australia, in the UK and the USA, and has been awarded a number of prizes, including Stanford Writing Scholarship, 1971; New Poetry Award, 1973; Marten Bequest Travelling Scholarship for poetry, 1978, and the Gleebooks Poetry Sprint, 1995. He has also received grants and fellowships from the Australia Council, Arts Tasmania and the Eleanor Dark Foundation.
He has had an abiding interest in creating opportunities for poets and other artists with disabilities and from 1998 to 2000 he was National Secretary of DADAA (Disability and the Arts, Disadvantage and the Arts Australia). In 1999-2000 he was writer/co-ordinator for a national project for writers with cerebral palsy, conducted through Arts 'R' Access. In 2002 he was editor of the 'Launceston Longpoem', a web-based community writing project funded through Tasmanian Regional Arts.
Tim is currently in receipt of a grant from Arts Tasmania to write a book-length poem called 'A Letter to Egon Kisch'.
Married to Stephanie since 1969, he has two daughters and two granddaughters, and now divides his time between writing, travelling and gardening. His poems have appeared in 14 Australian anthologies and most major Australian journals.
Bibliography
Tense Mood and Voice (Lyre-Bird Writers, Sydney, 1969)
The What of Sane (Prism Books, Sydney, 1971)
New Foundations (Prism Books, Sydney, 1976)
A Nickel In My Mouth (Robin Hill Books, Flowerdale, 1979)
The Atlas (Black Lightning Press, Wentworth Falls, 1982)
(as editor) Civil War/North (Cornford Press, Launceston, 1989)
Red Dirt (Paper Bark Press, Sydney, 1990)
(as editor) I Am Here (Community Arts Network, Hobart, 1992)
(as editor) Lozenge (Cornford Press, Launceston, 1992)
The Sreets Aren't for Dreamers (Shoestring Press, Nottingham, 1995)
Taking Queen Victoria to Inveresk (QVM&AG, Launceston, 1997)
(as editor) Creative Parlance (Arts 'R' Access, Launceston, 2000)
Head and Shin (Walleah Press, Hobart, 2004)