Fred Curtis was educated in England and brought up on traditional poetics. He has a BA from Deakin University, a BLtt (Hons) and a MCW, both from the University of Melbourne. Curtis is a poet, short story writer, unpublished novelist and occasional essayist. He is the author of Prosody, an MPU chapbook on versification (2006) and Toes that Wiggle in a Hot Bath, a collection of sonnets (MPU 2007). His work has appeared in anthologies such as Across the Margin, Said the Rat! and Tracking the Black Dog. Curtis has been President of FAW Bayside and coordinator of the Lakeside Writers' Workshop. He is a contributor to POAM with ongoing articles on poetic form and is past Creator and convenor of Poémes Open Reading sessions at Hampton, as well as ongoing judge for the FAW National Awards.
Labelled a serial competition winner by the Victorian Writers' Centre, Curtis has written in virtually every verse form from Haiku to prose poems. Whilst he is a self-labelled New Formalist poet, he includes non-metrical (plain poetry) within the sphere of 'poetic form', but remains suspicious of academic trends like that of Language Poetry.
