Aussie poet Mick Leigh dies

Mr Leigh, who was also a teacher and conservationist, was well known in schools and libraries across Wiltshire for his children’s poetry workshops. He died in a London hospital after suffering a heart attack.

The former Winsley resident was at Bellefield Primary School in Trowbridge in October, helping to mark National Children's Book Week.

At the age of 70, Mr Leigh qualified as a TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) teacher and taught adults across the world.

In 2006, he travelled to Bangkok where he worked as a volunteer, instructing street sellers from a stool at the side of the road, and the following year he taught English in Mauritius.

In 2007 he moved from Winsley to London, hoping to further his career as a poet, although he continued to travel back to Wiltshire to teach.

Just three weeks before he died, he was working with the homeless near where he lived in Hanworth.

Mr Leigh was born in 1935 in Bromley, Kent, and was evacuated from London to the Fens during the war.

In his late teens, he went to Australia on Britain’s Assisted Migration Scheme, married there, had two sons and stayed for 50 years.

He worked as everything from a labourer on the railways to the lead singer in a rock and roll band, and finally set up a highly successful business helping intellectually disadvantaged children and adults to produce crafts.

He began writing poetry as therapy for the pressures of work, and eventually began to perform it publicly – a move that ultimately led him back to England, initially to Westbury, where he had a sister-in-law.

He wrote two poetry books for children, The Big Book of Bonza Poems, and for adults, Soul of the South.

He leaves a brother, Barry, in Australia, a stepbrother, Brian, in England, two sons, Richard and Andrew and three grandchildren.

His funeral will be held at Chichester Crematorium at 11am on Tuesday.

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