Born in Blenheim in 1950, John Allison returned to live near Christchurch in mid-2016 after 15 years in Melbourne. Prior to that, throughout the 1990s he’d had poems published in numerous literary journals here in New Zealand and overseas. Three collections of poetry were published during that time, and he was the featured poet in Poetry NZ 14. His fifth collection of poetry, A Place To Return To, was published in August 2019. A chapbook of new poems, Near Distance, is projected for publication later this year.