Kendrick Smithyman
Encyclopedia
William Kendrick Smithyman (9 October 1922–28 December 1995) was an award-winning New Zealand
poet and one of the most prolific of that nation's poets in the 20th century.
, a milling and logging town on the Wairoa River near Dargaville
, in the Northland Region in the far north of New Zealand. He was the only child of William "Bill" Kendrick Smithyman, an immigrant from England and a former soldier who had fought both in the Boer War
and World War I
and who had radical political sympathies. Before World War I, he had worked in sugar plantations in Fiji
. The poet's father had also been a sailor and waterside worker but fell on hard times during the Depression when the poet was growing up. The father at some points had to work on relief gangs to earn money. His wife, Annie Lavinia Evans, was born in Christchurch
. His parents managed a home for elderly men in Te Kopuru before moving to Auckland in the early 1930s. Some of Smithyman's poems, especially in Imperial Vistas Family Fictions (written in 1983-1984 and posthumously published in 2002) are about his father and other relatives from previous generations whom Smithyman had never met, including his grandfather, also named William Kendrick, born in 1829, who became a sailor, fought for the British Royal Navy in the Crimean War
, traveled to Australia and India, then became harbourmaster at Ramsgate on the southeast coast of England.
The family moved to several communities in and around Auckland before settling on Boscawen Avenue in Point Chevalier, where the lonely boy read voraciously and attended Point Chevalier Primary School. There he became a lifelong friend of future poet and historian Keith Sinclair
. Smithyman also attended Seddon Memorial Technical College
(1935–1939) and Auckland Teachers' Training College (1940–1941), from which he earned a teacher's certificate. There his first stories and poems were published in the college magazine, Manuka, edited by Robert Lowry
, who later became Smithyman’s first publisher.
In World War II
, Smithyman served in the New Zealand Army artillery as bombardier (1941–1942), then as a quartermaster in the Royal New Zealand Air Force from 1942 to 1945. His service in the armed services was spent in New Zealand except for a short period in 1945 when he was stationed on Norfolk Island
, resulting Considerations, a sequence of poems later published in Landfall and after that in the 1951 edition of Allen Curnow
's Book of New Zealand Verse 1923–1950.
. Thereafter, Smithyman's poetry made it into all significant anthologies of New Zealand poetry.
Smithyman was closely associated with other writers in Auckland, such as Robert Chapman
, Maurice Duggan
and Keith Sinclair
.
In August 1946, at Auckland, Smithyman married the poet Mary Isobel Neal
(née Stanley; 1919–1980), whose first husband had been killed in the war. The couple had three sons. He dedicated his first books, Seven Sonnets (1946) and The Blind Mountain & Other Poems (1950) to her. From 1946 to 1963 he was a primary and intermediate teacher at various schools in the Auckland area, where he specialised in teaching children with learning difficulties. In lectures and articles he promoted special needs education for psychologically impaired and high-achieving children, and the training of special-education teachers. Smithyman also attended Auckland University College sporadically, as a part-time student, but did not stay to get a degree. When the Education Department refused to allow him a leave of absence to work on a book of literary criticism, he resigned his position in 1963 and that year took up a teaching position as a tutor of English at the University of Auckland. From 1964 to 1965 he also edited and presented a radio programme, Perspective: A Programme of Critical Writing
Intellectually curious and widely read, Smithyman assimilated a wide range of poetic influences, especially post-war Anglo-American modernism. The English poets T. S. Eliot
, W. H. Auden
, Dylan Thomas
and Americans John Crowe Ransom
, Allen Tate
, Robert Lowell
and Marianne Moore
were all influences. He initially avoided some of the preoccupations of earlier New Zealand poets with landscape and colonial history. He was also fascinated by 17th century poets, especially John Donne
. At this time Smithyman wrote ironic, anti-Romantic love poetry thick with syntactical complexity, dense argument, and many references. "[H]is poetry, above all, was academic in style. Smithyman's verse was notorious for its knotty language and allusive obscurity." Many of the poems from this period were eventually collected in Inheritance (1962) and Flying to Palmerston (1968).
The early 1960s he spent less effort on poetry and more on literary criticism, notably A Way of Saying: A Study of New Zealand Poetry (1965). The book's description of the aesthetics and practice of Auckland poets, whose work he dubbed "academic" (including M. K. Joseph
, Keith Sinclair
, Mary Stanley
, C. K. Stead
, and the later work of Allen Curnow
), also provided insights into his own outlook and poems. "This idiosyncratic book — the first full-length study of the subject — analysed the Romantic affiliations of earlier New Zealand poets, and pointed to subtle regional differences (especially between Auckland and Wellington poets) in his own generation," according to Peter Simpson.
Smithyman was promoted to senior tutor at the University of Auckland
in 1966, and he held the post until 1987. A six-month stay in 1969 at the University of Leeds
as a visiting fellow in Commonwealth literature resulted in travel in Britain and North America, which stimulated many poems. On returning home in 1970, his poetry engaged the landscapes, history and people of his native Northland, as seen in Earthquake Weather, as well as The Seal in the Dolphin Pool (1974), and Dwarf With a Billiard Cue (1978). "Whatever the biographical reasons (travel, maturity, a grown-up family) the next book, Earthquake Weather (1972) is a different kind of book, more like the four volumes that have followed than anything previous", Murray Edmund wrote in 1988. Some of these works became his most admired verse and are his most anthologized poems, including "An Ordinary Day Beyond Kaitaia", "Tomarata", and "Reading the Maps: an Academic Exercise".
Although Smithyman initially seemed to shy away from writing poems about the landscape, he did write some even in his earliest years ("The Bay 1942", "Bream Bay"), and he turned to that subject in some of his later poems. He wrote about his 1969 travels in North America and Britain in 1969 and about his trip to Canada in 1981. Concerning New Zealand, he wrote about Coromandel ("Colville" and "Where Waikawau Stream Comes Out"), Auckland ("About Setting a Jar on a Hill"), the coast around Pirongia ("Bird Bay", "Below Karioi"), and other areas in the Central North Island ("In the Sticks", "Tokaanu"). The Northland came up in his writing quite a bit, with verses about Puhoi
, Waipu
, Kaitaia
, and the area around Dargaville where he grew up. The Bay of Islands
and Hokianga
sites were mentioned in his posthumous book, Atua Wera.
In 1986 he was awarded an honorary LittD by Auckland University, and he won the New Zealand Book Awards for poetry for Stories About Wooden Keyboards (1985). The poems in that volume were more accessible to the general reader than his previous books and tended to use more narrative, anecdote and comedy. This vein in his poetry continued with Are You Going to the Pictures? (1987) and Auto/biographies (1992). He revised many earlier poems in significant ways for his Selected Poems (1989).
Smithyman's other writing in his final years included essays on New Zealand philology and critical editions of novels by William Satchell and the stories of Greville Texidor. He was made an OBE in 1990. He died in December 1995 at North Shore Hospital
in Auckland, after falling ill at his home in Northcote
.
At his death, Smithyman left five volumes of unpublished poems, including a number intended for an eventual Collected Works edition and more than 500 other poems he didn't intend to publish. Shortly before his death, he completed Atua Wera, a long poem of almost 300 parts largely about Penetana Papahurihia (also known as Te Atua Wera), an early 19th century Nga Puhi religious leader. The poem appeared posthumously as a book in 1997 and "was immediately recognised as perhaps his finest work and one of the major New Zealand poems", according to Peter Simpson. In 2006, "Mudflat Works", the online division of Holloway Press, published online Smithyman's 1,500-poem Collected Works, which Smithyman had selected, made final revisions for and put aside in 13 manila folders.
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
poet and one of the most prolific of that nation's poets in the 20th century.
Family and early life
Smithyman was born in Te KopuruTe Kopuru
Te Kopuru is the largest community on the Pouto Peninsula in Northland, New Zealand. The Wairoa River separates the peninsula at this point from the main North Auckland Peninsula to the east...
, a milling and logging town on the Wairoa River near Dargaville
Dargaville
Dargaville is a town in the North Island of New Zealand. It is situated on the bank of the Northern Wairoa River in the Northland region. The town is located 55 kilometres southwest of Whangarei....
, in the Northland Region in the far north of New Zealand. He was the only child of William "Bill" Kendrick Smithyman, an immigrant from England and a former soldier who had fought both in the Boer War
Boer War
The Boer Wars were two wars fought between the British Empire and the two independent Boer republics, the Oranje Vrijstaat and the Republiek van Transvaal ....
and World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
and who had radical political sympathies. Before World War I, he had worked in sugar plantations in Fiji
Fiji
Fiji , officially the Republic of Fiji , is an island nation in Melanesia in the South Pacific Ocean about northeast of New Zealand's North Island...
. The poet's father had also been a sailor and waterside worker but fell on hard times during the Depression when the poet was growing up. The father at some points had to work on relief gangs to earn money. His wife, Annie Lavinia Evans, was born in Christchurch
Christchurch
Christchurch is the largest city in the South Island of New Zealand, and the country's second-largest urban area after Auckland. It lies one third of the way down the South Island's east coast, just north of Banks Peninsula which itself, since 2006, lies within the formal limits of...
. His parents managed a home for elderly men in Te Kopuru before moving to Auckland in the early 1930s. Some of Smithyman's poems, especially in Imperial Vistas Family Fictions (written in 1983-1984 and posthumously published in 2002) are about his father and other relatives from previous generations whom Smithyman had never met, including his grandfather, also named William Kendrick, born in 1829, who became a sailor, fought for the British Royal Navy in the Crimean War
Crimean War
The Crimean War was a conflict fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the French Empire, the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Sardinia. The war was part of a long-running contest between the major European powers for influence over territories of the declining...
, traveled to Australia and India, then became harbourmaster at Ramsgate on the southeast coast of England.
The family moved to several communities in and around Auckland before settling on Boscawen Avenue in Point Chevalier, where the lonely boy read voraciously and attended Point Chevalier Primary School. There he became a lifelong friend of future poet and historian Keith Sinclair
Keith Sinclair
Sir Keith Sinclair, CBE was a poet and noted historian of New Zealand.Born and raised in Auckland, Sinclair was a student at Auckland University College, which was then part of the University of New Zealand. He was awarded a Ph.D...
. Smithyman also attended Seddon Memorial Technical College
Western Springs College
Western Springs College is a co-educational state secondary school in Auckland, New Zealand. It teaches students from years 9 to 13 and is located near both Western Springs Park and Auckland Zoo...
(1935–1939) and Auckland Teachers' Training College (1940–1941), from which he earned a teacher's certificate. There his first stories and poems were published in the college magazine, Manuka, edited by Robert Lowry
Robert Lowry
Robert Lowry was an American politician from Mississippi. During the American Civil War he rose from the rank of private to that of brigadier general in the Confederate States Army. Lowry briefly served in the state senate after the war...
, who later became Smithyman’s first publisher.
In World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, Smithyman served in the New Zealand Army artillery as bombardier (1941–1942), then as a quartermaster in the Royal New Zealand Air Force from 1942 to 1945. His service in the armed services was spent in New Zealand except for a short period in 1945 when he was stationed on Norfolk Island
Norfolk Island
Norfolk Island is a small island in the Pacific Ocean located between Australia, New Zealand and New Caledonia. The island is part of the Commonwealth of Australia, but it enjoys a large degree of self-governance...
, resulting Considerations, a sequence of poems later published in Landfall and after that in the 1951 edition of Allen Curnow
Allen Curnow
Thomas Allen Munro Curnow ONZ CBE was a New Zealand poet and journalist. Curnow was born in Timaru and educated at Christchurch Boys' High School, Canterbury University, and Auckland University...
's Book of New Zealand Verse 1923–1950.
Career
By 1944, his poetry started appearing regularly in journals in New Zealand, Australia, Britain and the United States, quickly establishing his reputation in New Zealand as one of the leading poets of the nation's post-war generation. This status was confirmed by his inclusion in A Book of New Zealand Verse, 1923–50 (1951), edited by Allen CurnowAllen Curnow
Thomas Allen Munro Curnow ONZ CBE was a New Zealand poet and journalist. Curnow was born in Timaru and educated at Christchurch Boys' High School, Canterbury University, and Auckland University...
. Thereafter, Smithyman's poetry made it into all significant anthologies of New Zealand poetry.
Smithyman was closely associated with other writers in Auckland, such as Robert Chapman
Robert Chapman
Robert James Chapman is an English cricketer who played first-class cricket for Nottinghamshire and Worcestershire between 1992 and 1998, and List A cricket for Lincolnshire in the early 21st century...
, Maurice Duggan
Maurice Duggan
Maurice Noel Duggan was a New Zealand writer of short fiction.-Life Overview:Born in Auckland and raised on the city’s North Shore, Duggan was mentored by Frank Sargeson and was friendly with many of the important writers of the day, including Greville Texidor, John Reece Cole, Keith Sinclair and...
and Keith Sinclair
Keith Sinclair
Sir Keith Sinclair, CBE was a poet and noted historian of New Zealand.Born and raised in Auckland, Sinclair was a student at Auckland University College, which was then part of the University of New Zealand. He was awarded a Ph.D...
.
In August 1946, at Auckland, Smithyman married the poet Mary Isobel Neal
Mary Stanley
Mary Stanley is known primarily because of her dispute in the Crimea with Florence Nightingale, whose friend she also was.She was born in Alderley, Cheshire the third child of Edward Stanley, later to be the Bishop of Norwich, and sister of Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, Dean of Westminster and Owen...
(née Stanley; 1919–1980), whose first husband had been killed in the war. The couple had three sons. He dedicated his first books, Seven Sonnets (1946) and The Blind Mountain & Other Poems (1950) to her. From 1946 to 1963 he was a primary and intermediate teacher at various schools in the Auckland area, where he specialised in teaching children with learning difficulties. In lectures and articles he promoted special needs education for psychologically impaired and high-achieving children, and the training of special-education teachers. Smithyman also attended Auckland University College sporadically, as a part-time student, but did not stay to get a degree. When the Education Department refused to allow him a leave of absence to work on a book of literary criticism, he resigned his position in 1963 and that year took up a teaching position as a tutor of English at the University of Auckland. From 1964 to 1965 he also edited and presented a radio programme, Perspective: A Programme of Critical Writing
Intellectually curious and widely read, Smithyman assimilated a wide range of poetic influences, especially post-war Anglo-American modernism. The English poets T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
, W. H. Auden
W. H. Auden
Wystan Hugh Auden , who published as W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet,The first definition of "Anglo-American" in the OED is: "Of, belonging to, or involving both England and America." See also the definition "English in origin or birth, American by settlement or citizenship" in See also...
, Dylan Thomas
Dylan Thomas
Dylan Marlais Thomas was a Welsh poet and writer, Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 11 January 2008. who wrote exclusively in English. In addition to poetry, he wrote short stories and scripts for film and radio, which he often performed himself...
and Americans John Crowe Ransom
John Crowe Ransom
John Crowe Ransom was an American poet, essayist, magazine editor, and professor.-Life:...
, Allen Tate
Allen Tate
John Orley Allen Tate was an American poet, essayist, social commentator, and Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1943 to 1944.-Life:...
, Robert Lowell
Robert Lowell
Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV was an American poet, considered the founder of the confessional poetry movement. He was appointed the sixth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress where he served from 1947 until 1948...
and Marianne Moore
Marianne Moore
Marianne Moore was an American Modernist poet and writer noted for her irony and wit.- Life :Moore was born in Kirkwood, Missouri, in the manse of the Presbyterian church where her maternal grandfather, John Riddle Warner, served as pastor. She was the daughter of mechanical engineer and inventor...
were all influences. He initially avoided some of the preoccupations of earlier New Zealand poets with landscape and colonial history. He was also fascinated by 17th century poets, especially John Donne
John Donne
John Donne 31 March 1631), English poet, satirist, lawyer, and priest, is now considered the preeminent representative of the metaphysical poets. His works are notable for their strong and sensual style and include sonnets, love poetry, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs,...
. At this time Smithyman wrote ironic, anti-Romantic love poetry thick with syntactical complexity, dense argument, and many references. "[H]is poetry, above all, was academic in style. Smithyman's verse was notorious for its knotty language and allusive obscurity." Many of the poems from this period were eventually collected in Inheritance (1962) and Flying to Palmerston (1968).
The early 1960s he spent less effort on poetry and more on literary criticism, notably A Way of Saying: A Study of New Zealand Poetry (1965). The book's description of the aesthetics and practice of Auckland poets, whose work he dubbed "academic" (including M. K. Joseph
M. K. Joseph
Michael Kennedy Joseph was a British born New Zealand poet and novelist in several genres ranging from I'll Soldier No More, A Pound of Saffron and A Soldier's Tale to the science fiction works The Hole in the Zero and The Time of Achamoth to the historically-based Kaspar's Journey.-References and...
, Keith Sinclair
Keith Sinclair
Sir Keith Sinclair, CBE was a poet and noted historian of New Zealand.Born and raised in Auckland, Sinclair was a student at Auckland University College, which was then part of the University of New Zealand. He was awarded a Ph.D...
, Mary Stanley
Mary Stanley
Mary Stanley is known primarily because of her dispute in the Crimea with Florence Nightingale, whose friend she also was.She was born in Alderley, Cheshire the third child of Edward Stanley, later to be the Bishop of Norwich, and sister of Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, Dean of Westminster and Owen...
, C. K. Stead
C. K. Stead
Christian Karlson Stead, ONZ, CBE is a New Zealand writer whose works include novels, poetry, short stories, and literary criticism....
, and the later work of Allen Curnow
Allen Curnow
Thomas Allen Munro Curnow ONZ CBE was a New Zealand poet and journalist. Curnow was born in Timaru and educated at Christchurch Boys' High School, Canterbury University, and Auckland University...
), also provided insights into his own outlook and poems. "This idiosyncratic book — the first full-length study of the subject — analysed the Romantic affiliations of earlier New Zealand poets, and pointed to subtle regional differences (especially between Auckland and Wellington poets) in his own generation," according to Peter Simpson.
A change in style
From 1960 to 1965, Smithyman stopped writing poetry. Smithyman's poetry changed in style at some point or points in the 1960s or very early 1970s, although critics differ as to when the new style started appearing, and they can't pin down the cause. According to Ian Richards, the poem "Flying to Palmerston", which Smithyman wrote in an airport lounge in 1966 and which later became the title piece for the 1968 book, "signalled a new start in a new manner" in the poet's verse. "There is critical consensus that between this poem and his next collection, Earthquake Weather, in 1972, Smithyman's mature style emerged."Smithyman was promoted to senior tutor at the University of Auckland
University of Auckland
The University of Auckland is a university located in Auckland, New Zealand. It is the largest university in the country and the highest ranked in the 2011 QS World University Rankings, having been ranked worldwide...
in 1966, and he held the post until 1987. A six-month stay in 1969 at the University of Leeds
University of Leeds
The University of Leeds is a British Redbrick university located in the city of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England...
as a visiting fellow in Commonwealth literature resulted in travel in Britain and North America, which stimulated many poems. On returning home in 1970, his poetry engaged the landscapes, history and people of his native Northland, as seen in Earthquake Weather, as well as The Seal in the Dolphin Pool (1974), and Dwarf With a Billiard Cue (1978). "Whatever the biographical reasons (travel, maturity, a grown-up family) the next book, Earthquake Weather (1972) is a different kind of book, more like the four volumes that have followed than anything previous", Murray Edmund wrote in 1988. Some of these works became his most admired verse and are his most anthologized poems, including "An Ordinary Day Beyond Kaitaia", "Tomarata", and "Reading the Maps: an Academic Exercise".
Although Smithyman initially seemed to shy away from writing poems about the landscape, he did write some even in his earliest years ("The Bay 1942", "Bream Bay"), and he turned to that subject in some of his later poems. He wrote about his 1969 travels in North America and Britain in 1969 and about his trip to Canada in 1981. Concerning New Zealand, he wrote about Coromandel ("Colville" and "Where Waikawau Stream Comes Out"), Auckland ("About Setting a Jar on a Hill"), the coast around Pirongia ("Bird Bay", "Below Karioi"), and other areas in the Central North Island ("In the Sticks", "Tokaanu"). The Northland came up in his writing quite a bit, with verses about Puhoi
Puhoi
Puhoi is a settlement located approximately 50 km north of Auckland, New Zealand. Puhoi is probably a Maori word which may be translated as "Slow water"....
, Waipu
Waipu
Waipu is a small town in Bream Bay, in the Northland Region of New Zealand, with a Scottish heritage. The population was 1,491 in the 2006 Census, an increase of 222 from 2001. A highlight of the town's calendar is the annual Highland Games held at New Year...
, Kaitaia
Kaitaia
Kaitaia is a town in the far north region of New Zealand, at the base of the Aupouri Peninsula which is about 160 km northwest of Whangarei. It is the last major settlement on the main road north to the capes and bays on the peninsula...
, and the area around Dargaville where he grew up. The Bay of Islands
Bay of Islands
The Bay of Islands is an area in the Northland Region of the North Island of New Zealand. Located 60 km north-west of Whangarei, it is close to the northern tip of the country....
and Hokianga
Hokianga
Hokianga is an area surrounding the Hokianga Harbour, also known as The Hokianga River, a long estuarine drowned valley on the west coast in the north of the North Island of New Zealand....
sites were mentioned in his posthumous book, Atua Wera.
Later career
In 1980 Smithyman’s wife died after a long illness, and in January 1981 at Auckland he married Margaret Ann Edgcumbe, like himself a university tutor. Participation that year in the Harbourfront Literary Festival in Toronto, Canada was fruitful in generating many poems.In 1986 he was awarded an honorary LittD by Auckland University, and he won the New Zealand Book Awards for poetry for Stories About Wooden Keyboards (1985). The poems in that volume were more accessible to the general reader than his previous books and tended to use more narrative, anecdote and comedy. This vein in his poetry continued with Are You Going to the Pictures? (1987) and Auto/biographies (1992). He revised many earlier poems in significant ways for his Selected Poems (1989).
Smithyman's other writing in his final years included essays on New Zealand philology and critical editions of novels by William Satchell and the stories of Greville Texidor. He was made an OBE in 1990. He died in December 1995 at North Shore Hospital
North Shore Hospital
North Shore Hospital is a large public hospital in Takapuna, North Shore City, serving the northern part of the Auckland area. Located on Shakespeare Road near Lake Pupuke, it is administered by the Waitemata District Health Board, serving around 47,000 people a year.-Facilities:The hospital...
in Auckland, after falling ill at his home in Northcote
Northcote, New Zealand
Northcote is a suburb of North Shore City, one of several cities in the Auckland metropolitan area in northern New Zealand. It is located on the north shore of the Waitemata Harbour, four kilometres northwest of the Auckland city centre....
.
At his death, Smithyman left five volumes of unpublished poems, including a number intended for an eventual Collected Works edition and more than 500 other poems he didn't intend to publish. Shortly before his death, he completed Atua Wera, a long poem of almost 300 parts largely about Penetana Papahurihia (also known as Te Atua Wera), an early 19th century Nga Puhi religious leader. The poem appeared posthumously as a book in 1997 and "was immediately recognised as perhaps his finest work and one of the major New Zealand poems", according to Peter Simpson. In 2006, "Mudflat Works", the online division of Holloway Press, published online Smithyman's 1,500-poem Collected Works, which Smithyman had selected, made final revisions for and put aside in 13 manila folders.
Published poetry
Each year links to corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:- 19461946 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* W. H. Auden becomes a U.S. citizen...
: Seven Sonnets, Auckland: Pelorus Press - 19501950 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:*Charles Olson publishes his seminal essay, Projective Verse. In this, he called for a poetry of "open field" composition to replace traditional closed poetic forms with an improvised form that should...
: The Blind Mountain & Other Poems, Christchurch: Caxton Press - 19551955 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* The Group, a British poetry movement, starts meeting in London with gatherings taking place once a week, on Friday evenings, at first at Hobsbaum's flat and later at the house of Edward Lucie-Smith...
: The Gay Trapeze, Wellington: Handcraft Press - 19571957 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* Howl obscenity trial in San Francisco brings significant attention to beat poetry, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg...
: The Night Shift: Poems on Aspects of Love, by James K. BaxterJames K. BaxterJames Keir Baxter was a poet, and is a celebrated figure in New Zealand society.-Biography:Baxter was born in Dunedin to Archibald Baxter and Millicent Brown and grew up near Brighton. He was named after James Keir Hardie, a founder of the British Labour Party. His father had been a conscientious...
, Charles Doyle, Louis JohnsonLouis Johnson (poet)-Life:He graduated from Wellington Teachers’ Training College.From 1968 to 1980, Johnson lived overseas and traveled widely, with an extended stay in Papua New Guinea....
and Kendrick Smithyman, Wellington: Capricorn Press - 19621962 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* Writers in the Soviet Union this year were allowed to publish criticism of Joseph Stalin and were given more freedom generally, although many were severely criticized for doing so...
: Inheritance: Poems, Hamilton: Paul's Book Arcade - 19681968 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* The Belfast Group, a grouping of poets in Belfast, Northern Ireland, which was started in 1963 in poetry, lapsed in 1966 when founder Philip Hobsbaum left for Glasgow, is reconstituted this year by...
: Flying to Palmerston, Auckland: Published for the University of Auckland by the Oxford University Press - 19721972 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* John Betjeman becomes Poet Laureate...
: Earthquake Weather, Auckland: Auckland University Press - 19741974 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:*The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics is founded by Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman....
: The Seal in the Dolphin Pool, Auckland: Auckland University Press - 19781978 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Magazine, edited by Bruce Andrews and Charles Bernstein, first published...
: Dwarf with a Billiard Cue, Auckland : Auckland University Press and Oxford University Press - 19791979 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* The Kenyon Review is restarted by Kenyon College 10 years after the original publication was closed....
: Menu, Departmental Dinner in Honour of Professor S. Musgrove and Professor M.K. Joseph, the Senior Common Room, 30 November 1979 / [Poetry by W.K. Smithyman], Auckland: s.n. - 19831983 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* The Frogmore Press founded by Andre Evans and Jeremy Page at the Frogmore tea-rooms in Folkestone...
: Centennial Poets, Auckland: Printed for the Centenary Celebrations by the Mt Pleasant Press, University of Auckland; Poems by Kendrick Smithyman, Riemke Ensing, Terry Locke, Mervyn Thompson, Wystan Curnow, Peter Dane - 19851985 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* The term "New Formalism" was first used in the article "The Yuppie Poet" in the May 1985 issue of the AWP Newsletter in an attack on the poetry movement...
: Stories about Wooden Keyboards, Auckland: Auckland University Press and Oxford University Press - 19861986 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* New American Writing, an annual literary magazine concentrating on poetry, is founded in Chicago, Illinois....
: An Informal Occasion in the English Department for Peter Dane, Bill Pearson, Karl Stead, 5 December 1986: Three Poems, Auckland: Department of English, University of Auckland - 19871987 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* Charles Bukowski, fictionalised as alter ego Henry Chinaski, becomes the subject of the film Barfly starring Mickey Rourke....
: Are You Going to the Pictures, Auckland: Auckland University Press - 19891989 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* Dead Poets Society, a film incorporating excerpts from many traditional poets, ending with the title and opening line of Walt Whitman's lament on the death of Abraham Lincoln, "O Captain! My...
: Kendrick Smithyman: Selected Poems, "Chosen and introduced by Peter Simpson", Auckland: Auckland University Press - 19921992 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:The Forward Book of Poetry, an annual anthology of best British poems, is published for the first time by the Forward Poetry Trust. By 2003, the publication was selling 5,000 to 7,000 copies a year...
: Auto/Biographies: Poems 1987-89, Auckland: Auckland University Press - 19971997 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:*January 20 — Miller Williams of Arkansas reads his poem, "Of History and Hope," at President Clinton's inauguration....
: Tomarata, afterword by Peter Simpson, Auckland: Holloway Press; First published in: The Seal in the Dolphin Pool. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 19741974 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:*The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics is founded by Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman....
. - 19971997 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:*January 20 — Miller Williams of Arkansas reads his poem, "Of History and Hope," at President Clinton's inauguration....
: Atua Wera, Auckland: Auckland University Press (short-listed for Montana Book Awards in 19981998 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* Samizdat poetry magazine founded in Chicago .* Skanky Possum poetry magazine founded in Austin, Texas....
) - 20022002 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* After Ghazi al-Gosaibi, the Saudi Arabian ambassador to Britain, publishes a poem praising a suicide bomber who had killed himself and two Israelis after blowing himself up in a supermarket; the...
: Last Poems, "With notes by Peter Simpson"; Auckland: Holloway Press - 20022002 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* After Ghazi al-Gosaibi, the Saudi Arabian ambassador to Britain, publishes a poem praising a suicide bomber who had killed himself and two Israelis after blowing himself up in a supermarket; the...
: Imperial Vistas Family Fictions, Auckland: Auckland University Press A total of 134 poems written in 1983–1984, but none of them published in his lifetime. Smithyman said he wrote them largely to inform his sons about aspects of their family history. - 20042004 in literatureThe year 2004 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* Canada Reads selects Guy Vanderhaeghe's The Last Crossing to be read across the nation....
: Campana to Montale: Versions from Italian, Auckland: Writers Group - 20042004 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* April 1 — Foetry.com Web site is launched for the announced purpose of "Exposing fraudulent contests. Tracking the sycophants...
: Collected Poems, 1943-1995, edited & with notes by Margaret Edgcumbe and Peter Simpson, Auckland: Mudflat Webworks, ("Electronic book offered as part of the Smithyman Online website compiled by the University of Auckland and published by the online facility of the University of Auckland's Holloway Press, Mudflat Webworks," according to the University of Auckland Library website.)
Criticism
- 19651965 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* Meic Stephens founds Poetry Wales...
: A Way of Saying: a Study of New Zealand Poetry, Auckland: Collins
Edited by Smithyman
Each year links to corresponding "[year] in literature" article:- 19711971 in literatureThe year 1971 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*The Destiny Waltz by Gerda Charles wins the UK's first Whitbread Novel of the Year Award.-New books:*Hiroshi Aramata - Teito Monogatari...
: William Satchell, The Land of the Lost, edited and introduced by Kendrick Smithyman, Auckland: Auckland University Press - 19851985 in literatureThe year 1985 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-New books:*Isaac Asimov - Robots and Empire*Margaret Atwood - The Handmaid's Tale*Jean M. Auel - The Mammoth Hunters*Iain Banks - Walking on Glass...
: The New Gramophone Room: Poetry & Fiction, selected by C.K. Stead, Elizabeth SmitherElizabeth SmitherElizabeth Smither MNZM is a New Zealand poet and writer.She worked as a librarian.-Awards:* 2002 Te Mata Poet Laureate.* 2000 Montana New Zealand Book Award for Poetry* 2008 Prime Minister's Award for poetry....
, Kendrick Smithyman, Auckland: Department of English, University of Auckland - 19851985 in literatureThe year 1985 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-New books:*Isaac Asimov - Robots and Empire*Margaret Atwood - The Handmaid's Tale*Jean M. Auel - The Mammoth Hunters*Iain Banks - Walking on Glass...
: William Satchell, The Toll of the Bush, Edited and introduced by Kendrick Smithyman, Auckland: Auckland University Press, Oxford University Press - 19871987 in literatureThe year 1987 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*Tom Wolfe was paid $5 million for the film rights to his novel, The Bonfire of the Vanities, the most ever earned by an author, at the time.-Fiction:...
: Greville Texidor, In Fifteen Minutes You Can Say a Lot: Selected Fiction, edited and with an introduction by Kendrick Smithyman, Wellington: Victoria University Press
External links
- Smithyman Online website
- New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre web page on Smithyman
- New Zealand Book Council web page on Smithyman