Hart was born on 5 July 1954 to James Henry Hart and his wife, Rosina Mary Wooton. Hart's family moved to Brisbane, Australia, in 1966. Hart attended secondary school at Oxley State High School, and gained his Bachelor of Arts degree in philosophy from the Australian National University. Hart received his PhD from the University of Melbourne in 1986. In 1991 he became Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Monash University, rising to full Professor in 1995 and also becoming Director of the Institute for Critical and Cultural Studies. He also taught in the Centre for Studies in Religion and Theology. Leaving Monash in 2002, he became Professor of Philosophy and Literature at Notre Dame University, a position he held until 2007, when he became Edwin B. Kyle Professor of Christian Studies at the University of Virginia, a position he still holds.

Hart was first inspired by Percy Bysshe Shelley after his English teacher read him Ozymandias, and also lists T. S. Eliot, Charles Baudelaire, Paul Éluard, Vasko Popa, Zbigniew Herbert and Gerard Manley Hopkins as influences. He first began writing poetry as a teenager, partly thanks to a Shelley anthology he had purchased and partly as a way to cope with Brisbane's hot summers, which he was not used to; he would go to the Brisbane Public Library, which had air conditioning, and there read a wide variety of poetry. Originally an Anglican, Hart became a Catholic in 1980, and he has been classed as a "religious poet". Hart is mainly known as a theologian as well as a poet.

Poetry

On the back cover of Kevin Hart's 1999 volume of poetry, Wicked Heat, Harold Bloom described Hart as the "most outstanding Australian poet of his generation", and one of "the major living poets in the English language". Bloom also names Hart as one of the eleven canonical writers of Australia and New Zealand in his "The Western Canon." Hart appears also under Italian poetry as the translator of Giuseppe Ungaretti. Hart has received multiple awards, including the Greybeal-Gowen Prize for Poetry in 2008, the John Shaw Neilson Poetry Award in 1977, the Mattara Poetry Award in 1982, the Wesley Michel Wright Award in 1984, the NSW Premier's Award in 1985, the Victorian Premier's Award in 1985, the Grace Leven Prize for Poetry in 1991 and 1996, the Christopher Brennan Award in 1999.

In an essay on Hart's poetry and theology, Toby Davidson writes, "Kevin Hart's poetry cannot be separated from his multiple, enduring engagements with mysticism and mystical poetics. He is an innovator, suggesting new approaches to the mystical in the free facets of *attending*." Shaoyang Zhang concludes a long essay on the poet as follows: "Through the examination of 'Nineteen Songs' and 'Amo Te Solo', we have seen Hart, like Levinas, exhibits the Christian model(s) in the phenomenological relationship between speakers and their beloveds in his distinctly poetic language.

Paul Kane has commented on a number of Kevin Hart's poetry volumes. For example, he says that "Kevin Hart’s sense that in poetry the origin is never coterminous with the beginning leads to a poetry that is finely tuned to absence and withdrawal." Nathanael O'Reilly says, "Hart is often labelled a religious poet, and the bulk of the criticism of his poetry focuses on the religious, spiritual and philosophical aspects of his work, and the relationship between his poetry and his philosophical and theological writings. However, Hart is also an intensely physical and sensual poet, one whose work examines the effects of the physical environment on humans, explicitly addresses physical aspects of romantic relationships, and uses physical actions and sensations as metaphors for spiritual communion." Other critics, Michael Brennan among them, point to philosophical aspects of Hart's poetry, comparing, for instance, aspects of "The Room" with some of Heidegger's theories.

Reviewer Pam Brown wrote of Hart's 1999 Wicked Heat, "It’s as if these poems were written by a very serious old man and, apart from a recognisable poetic compulsion to write, it’s sometimes hard to grasp the point of this transparent yet obtuse set", while Christian Sheppard, reviewing the same volume, said "The primary pleasure of Hart's poetry, however, is an easy rhythmed, swiftly flowing line tracing the moment-by-moment impressions of an often impassioned yet always lucid mind".

Of Hart's 2008 volume, Young Rain, fellow Australian poet and critic Geoffrey Lehmann writes, "In general I was disappointed by Young Rain and found the religious poems self-indulgent. There were too many generalised symbols such as recurrent clocks and wine and stars. Everything was too smooth and vague, evading meaning." Lehmann did find one poem "full of specific detail, that's very funny and also touching" and concludes that perhaps there were "other worthwhile poems in this book I have overlooked." Writing about the same volume, poet Cyril Wong said, "Here is a poetry that bravely attempts to speak to a universal experience of desire and love, but also loss and mourning. It is full of equivocation and a brazen sentimentality that occasionally undermines the force of its message. Yet, as a book, Young Rain has enough of a convincing sensuality and a persistent sense of metaphysical wonder to make up for its deficiencies."

Several interviews with Hart are available: Earl Livings, “On a Clean Page: An Interview with Kevin Hart,” Bystander, 1: 1 (1992), 43-53, David McCooey, “‘Intersecting Worlds’: An Interview with Kevin Hart,” Meridian, 15: 1 (1996), 23-37. John Kinsella, “An Interview with Kevin Hart,” Salt, 10 (1997), 256-75; Lee Spinks, “‘Sketching the Horizon’: An Interview with Kevin Hart,” Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 35:2 (2000), 5-14; Paul Mitchell, “Interview with Kevin Hart,” Cordite, 8 (2001)(www.cordite.org.au/09/mitchell,hart.asp); Stephen Watson, “Interview,” Verse, 20: 2/3, 49-73. Shorter version reprinted in The Verse Book of Interviews (Amherst, MA: Verse Press, 2005), 302-19; Julian Wolfreys, “Going to School with Socrates: Interview with Kevin Hart,” Thinking Difference: Critics in Conversation, ed. Julian Wolfreys (New York: Fordham University Press, 2004), 111-118; Mark Manopoloulos, "A Thinking Otherwise," With Gifted Thinkers (Peter Lang, 2010), 75-100.

Theology and Literary Criticism

In his professional life, Kevin Hart is primarily known as a theologian who works in two areas: systematic theology and religion and literature. His work in systematic theology has not yet been collected into volumes but remains as uncollected essays and chapters. In general, Hart's approach is to ground theology in a phenomenology of the Christ, both a phenomenology of Jesus's words and actions, and an account of Jesus as performing epoche and reduction, especially through the parables. On Hart's understanding, the preaching of the Kingdom brings forth Christ's death and that preaching is confirmed by the Resurrection. His work on the Christian mystical tradition is focused on practices of contemplation. In terms of religion and literature, Hart has written extensively on English and French poetry and Christianity, especially Christian mysticism. Recent work has converged on Geoffrey Hill.

One facet of his work is extensive commentary on the writing of the atheist Maurice Blanchot to whom he has devoted four books: *The Dark Gaze*, *The Power of Contestation*, *Nowhere without No*, and *Clandestine Encounters*. Peter Craven described Hart as "one of those critics who combines an attractive expository technique with an openness to speculative ideas". In reference to Hart's book on Derrida titled The Trespass of the Sign: Deconstruction, Theology and Philosophy, Gregg Taylor said that Hart "Hart's exceptional methodological and conceptual clarity provide a lucid account of the thought of Derrida." Hart's analysis of the work of Samuel Johnson, Samuel Johnson and the Culture of Property has been both criticized and praised. Katherine Turner wrote, "Indeed, there is much in Samuel Johnson and the Culture of Property which performs little more than the function of anecdotal hagiography...the volume frequently degenerates into anecdote and speculation...", while, on the other hand, Alan T. McKenzie wrote that "Hart is a thorough and reliable guide to familiar events" in Johnson's life, and he "has a good eye for the unfamiliar, too".

• The Departure (1978)
• The Lines of Your Hand (1981)
• Your Shadow (1984)
• Peniel (1991)
• New and Selected Poems (1994)
• Dark Angel (1996)
• Nineteen Songs (1999)
• Wicked Heat (1999)
• Madonna (2000)
• Flame Tree (2002)
• Night Music (2004)
• Young Rain (2008)

Criticism

• The Trespass of the Sign (1989)
• A. D. Hope (1992)
• "The Oxford Book of Australian Religious Verse* (2004)
• Losing the Power to Say ‘I’ (1996)
• Samuel Johnson and the Culture of Property (1999)
• How to Read a Page of Boswell (2000)
• "The Fifth Question and After: Poems for Tomas Salamun" (2003)
• The Impossible (2004)
• Nowhere Without No: In Memory of Maurice Blanchot (editor; 2004)
• "The Power of Contestation: Perspectives on Maurice Blanchot" (with Geoffrey Hartman, 2004)
• Postmodernism: A Beginner’s Guide (2004)
• The Dark Gaze: Maurice Blanchot and the Sacred (2004)
• Derrida and Religion: Other Testaments (with Yvonne Sherwood, 2004)
• The Experience of God (Editor, with Barbara Wall), 2005)
• Counter-Experiences: Reading Jean-Luc Marion (editor; 2007)
• "The Exorbitant: Emmanuel Levinas between Jews and Christians" (with Michael A. Signer, 2010)
• "Clandestine Encounters: Philosophy in the Narratives of Maurice Blanchot" (2010)