Andrew James Smith was born in New Zealand in 1973. He first went to Europe in 1997, after initially leaving postgraduate university, turning 24 in Amsterdam. Since then he's travelled further throughout Europe, China, Scandinavia, Israel, and Southeast Asia. Living mainly in London Andrew's had various part-time jobs ranging from bar work in a strip-club to research journalism. He has also lived in the Czech Republic, Portugal, Australia, Thailand, Taiwan, and on the south coast of England. Andrew's first volume of selected poems (the original Futile) was privately printed in an east London warehouse in 2004 and a copy can be found in the National Poetry Library of London.