Born in Malacca in 1941, Salleh spent ten years Down Under as one of the last Colombo Plan Scholars. But instead of studying, he got married to a fellow student in his first year at the University of Adelaide. His in-laws disapproved, so the couple moved to Hobart where Salleh became a student of one of Australia’s major poets, James McAuley, at the University of Tasmania. He returned to Malaysia in 1973 to lecture in English Literature at Universiti Malaya, but quit in 1983 to become a freelance scribbler, actor and translator. His first book was the bilingual poetry collection, Sajak-Sajak Saleh: Poems Sacred and Profane (Teks, 1987). It was followed by As I Please (Skoob, 1994) and Nothing is Sacred (Maya Press, 2003), which were compilations of his popular New Straits Times column, the poetry book Adam’s Dream (Silverfish, 2007), and the play The Amok of Mat Solo (Silverfish, 2011). He died in Subang Jaya in 2020.