Born in 1949, Kenneth de Kok spent his boyhood in Stilfontein, a mining town now in North West Province. After boarding school in Kimberley, conscription, and three years studying at the University of the Witwatersrand, he left South Africa in 1971 to avoid further military service. He lived and worked in the UK and Holland without documentation before immigrating to Canada in 1978. Self-employed in the kitchen cabinet business, he lives in the countryside of Eastern Ontario. He is married to the Canadian poet Carolyn Smart, and has three sons. He regularly visits South Africa where his mother and three sisters live.