David Campbell lives in Victoria, Australia and is currently enjoying retirement after a working life in various education-related fields, including twenty years as a teacher of senior mathematics and English. He divides his time at the keyboard between poetry (both traditional and free verse), short stories, and newspaper articles.

David particularly loves Australia’s great history of traditional (or bush) verse and is disappointed at the extent to which it is so often ignored in mainstream literary publications despite its huge popularity, whether written or performed, at the many bush poetry festivals held throughout the year. Although he has also had success with free verse, he is keen to promote traditional poetry, particularly in terms of the assistance that a mastery of rhythm and rhyme gives to any form of writing. Not only is bush verse accessible to all, it is a tremendously valuable teaching tool when working with young children. With this in mind, he and his wife Ellinor, together with illustrator Cathy Scott, produced Simply Poetry!, a book of original poems for pre-school children. David has also contributed extensively to two other poetry books for children and published collections of award-winning bush poetry and short stories. One of his short stories featured in Best Australian Stories 2005 (Black Inc.) and his work has also appeared in Award Winning Australian Writing 2009 and 2010 (Melbourne Books).

For further details of David’s published books, please click here

For access to David’s award-winning poem ‘Wasteland’, please click here