Robert Harris

Robert Harris (1951 – 24 March 1993) was an Australian poet, who also wrote as Orson Rattray Der. Life Robert Harris was born in Melbourne. He was educated in Doveton High School. He enlisted in the Australian Navy in 1968 during the Vietnam War. During the 1970s he spent time in a commune. He was married but separated from his wife in the 1980s with no children. He lived in Sydney in the later part of his life. Harris died in Summer Hill, New South Wales on 24 March 1993 of a heart attack. His obituary in The Sydney Morning Herald stated that "he followed his own poetic path with little regard for the niceties of a literary career." A friend wrote "Robert Harris had only known two things in his short life: poverty and poetry. He knew poetry would get him, and it did." Harris was involved in literary magazines as an author and as an editor. He worked as an editor for New Poetry magazine and for Overland magazine. Five books of his poetry were published.