MTC Cronin

b. 1963,  Merriwa, New South Wales

MTC Cronin's several collections of poetry have been recognised within Australia and internationally. She has won major Australian literary awards, including the prestigious Gwen Harwood Memorial Poetry Prize as well as being awarded the Marten Bequest Travelling Scholarship, two Ian Potter Foundation Cultural Trust grants, and a grant from the Australia Council for the Arts.

Her childhood in Queensland, later studies in politics and law, her current life on an organic pepper farm  and the presence of poetry in all of this, was explored as part of The Red Room series 'The Poet's Life Works', presented at the Sydney Writers' Festival, 2009. The set piece created for this presentation brought her work to life, and brought her life to the audience: a series of fishbowls that weighed down poems from Cronin's The Law of Poetry. Each fishbowl contained enigmatic objects that were alluded to in the poems including a box of sand, a cucumber, a yo-yo, a moth and an ant. Onstage, three vivid collages by artist Oliver Watts led the eye from Cronin herself to these deconstructed fragments of her portrait.

Cronin currently lives in Conondale, Queensland, Australia on an organic farm specializing in fresh Spanish produce.

Listen to MTC deliver the 2009 Red Room minislec or download an excerpt from 'The Poet's Life Works' project page.