About

John Knight was born in Bendigo in 1935. His Father was an evangelist and in 1938 the family moved to this mother's native country, New Zealand. During the war years they traveled from town to town in the North Island while his father ran tent mission. In 1946 they returned to Queensland, Australia, where his father ministered to congregations in a number of towns and cities. After two years of high school and a variety of jobs, he taught in a number of primary schools in Queensland in Queensland and New South Wales. He also studied theology at Avondale College. Later he transferred to secondary teaching, and after completing a doctorate in the sociology of education and religion he lectured in teacher education at the Mt Gravatt College of Advanced Education. In 1993 moved to the University of Queensland, where he is currently an Associate Professor in The Graduate School of Education.

As well as a number of books on education policy and the sociology of education, he has published widely in small literary journals and magazines in Australia and New Zealand. He is poetry editor of the journal, Social Alternatives. His first Book of verse, From Derrida to Sara Lee, was published in 1994. An accomplished haijin, he is co-editor of Paper Wasp, and Australian journal of haiku, and co-author of Wattle Winds: An Australian haiku sequence.

Proudly published by Sweetwater Press

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Extract

Night Flowers

There are
ten blue butterflies
moving slowly
up past the grasping hands

A ground orchid thrusts
its pink blooms
against
the muscled trunk

One sly vine places
four eight petalled red
flowers
over a thick leg

And five
green splayed epiphytes
perch anyhow
on the twisted tree

Watching:
surely the sky
cannot
bleed for much longer?

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