William Hart-Smith was born in England, raised in New Zealand, and spent most of his career in Australia. He produced perhaps a thousand poems in his life. His work was noted, on the one hand, for its clarity and simplicity and, on the other hand, for its capacity for wonder and insight into natural things, the connections among them, and their relationships with us.For decades now his work has been popular in schools and it has been widely anthologised in poetry books for children in Australia and overseas. His poems are children's poems in the sense that they can be appreciated by children in primary as well as secondary schools.
