Geoffrey Lehmann


Geoffrey Lehmann 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, Komm du, du letzter, den ich anerkenne.
Journalist Claire Lehmann is his daughter-in-law.

Awards