Geoffrey Lehmann

Geoffrey Lehmann (born 28 June 1940) is an Australian poet, children's writer, and tax lawyer.

Biography Lehmann grew up in McMahons Point, Sydney, and attended the Sydney Church of England Grammar School in North Sydney. He graduated in arts and law from the University of Sydney in 1960 and 1963 respectively. In 1961, he demonstrated in a student newspaper article that fellow student Robert Hughes had published plagiarised poetry by Terence Tiller and others, and a drawing by Leonard Baskin.

Lehmann was the first Australian poet to be published by the London publishing house Faber & Faber.

Lehmann has worked as a solicitor in his own small law firm, as an academic lawyer at the University of New South Wales, and as a corporate tax lawyer, having retired from PwC. He continues to write as a literary reviewer for The Australian newspaper.

On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Rainer Maria Rilke's birth in 2025, Lehmann published translations of fifty poems from Rilke's 1907 collection New Poems, adding Rilke's untitled last poem, written on his deathbed in 1926, (Come my last visitor. I know your name).

Journalist Claire Lehmann is his daughter-in-law.

Awards Grace Leven Prize for Poetry, winner 1965 for The Ilex Tree with Les Murray Grace Leven Prize for Poetry, winner 1981 for Nero's Poems Grace Leven Prize for Poetry, winner 1997 for Collected Poems Prime Minister's Literary Awards – Poetry, winner 2015 for Poems 1957–2013