Life beyond Radford

I am an Australian educator, writer and philosopher, of British, German, and Jewish ancestry (the grandson of Holocaust survivors), with creativity-laden lineage on both sides of my family. I am also a relative of Scottish writer, critic, and biographer Sir John Gibson Lockhart—the author of Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott (who was also Lockhart’s father-in-law). Long before I became aware of this literary connection, I felt a calling to become a writer/poet, including to write a semi-autobiographical philosophy book—a vision sparked in part by studying French Renaissance philosopher Michel de Montaigne’s Les Essais at university. Since then, I have been deeply interested in the power of written and spoken word to shape individual lives and societies, anchored in the belief that "everyone has a story to tell". As a writer, If You Go There, It Will Come: Poems of Faith in Place (a 73-poem anthology currently being distributed to potential book publishers) is my first formal expression of that calling. I have recently been named on the 2025 Poetry d'Amour longlist, for my poem, 'Into the York Night', which will be published in the 2025 Poetry d'Amour anthology.