Michael Leibowitz

Michael Leibowitz is a poet, painter, and patriarch currently living in Sydney, Australia. He grew up in South Africa, where he trained initially in science and medicine, and later specialised in dermatology. He emigrated with his wife and three daughters, first to New Zealand and later to Australia, and now has nine grandchildren.

He began writing poetry during the COVID-19 pandemic, which catalysed a poetic impulse that had lain dormant for decades. Since then he has published four collections: Looking In (2022, Sydney Jewish Museum), Wardrobe of Secrets (2024, Five Islands Press), Mellow Fruitfulness: A Meditation on Growing Old (2026, Sydney Jewish Museum), and To Live By These: A Poet's Meditation on Being Jewish (2026, Sydney Jewish Museum). His poem "Travelling to Jerusalem," from this last collection, has been shortlisted for the Chaya Fedler Award for Poetry in the 2026 Shalom Collective Australian Jewish Writer Awards.

His work has appeared in the Transformations Anthology (Poetica Christi Press, 2022) and Mingled Voices 8: International Proverse Poetry Prize Anthology (Hong Kong, 2023). He has presented at the Willoughby Literary Festival and the Festival of the Spoken Word, and can regularly be heard at open mic poetry readings around Sydney.

Michael's engagement with the visual arts — mostly painting — runs just as deep. He has held two solo exhibitions, in Johannesburg and at the Frances Keevil Gallery (2017), and his work sits in private collections in South Africa, America, and Australia. He has taken part in numerous group exhibitions and been awarded the Waverley Woollahra Prize for multimedia art on two occasions.