Denis Glover

Overview

Denis Glover wrote New Zealand's most famous poem, yet his work has been out of print for many years. This fresh selection from his verse includes 'The Magpies' along with a wide variety of other poems, lyrical and satirical. Bill Manhire's selection is based on Glover's own 1981 Selected Poems, and it reveals a richer and far more lively writer than the one usually found in anthologies.

Author Biography

Printer, typographer, publisher, boxer, sailor, scholar, satirist, wit and poet, Denis Glover was born in Dunedin in 1912 and died in Wellington in 1980. He founded the Caxton Press in 1936 and published much important New Zealand writing. He wrote New Zealand's most famous poem, yet his work has been out of print for many years. Bill Manhire was born in Invercargill in 1946 and educated at the Universities of Otago and London. He now heads the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University of Wellington and is director of their prestigious creative writing programme.He is due to retire in February 2013. Graduates of the course include many of New Zealand's most accomplished contemporary writers.His most recent books are his Selected Poems, and These Rough Notes published in 2012. The Victims of Lightning was published in 2010 and shows him at the height of his powers. He has also recently co-edited the anthologies The Best of Best New Zealand Poems and The Exercise Book. In 1997 he was made New Zealand's inaugural Poet Laureate, in a scheme sponsored by Te Mata Estate, and the collection of poetry What To Call Your Child was published to celebrate his term as Poet Laureate. At the heart of the book is a sequence of poems which arose from a visit to Antarctica in 1998. He spent two weeks on the ice, and was briefly at the South Pole. Bill’s fascination with Antarctica has resulted in The Wide White Page: Writers Imagine Antarctica, an anthology of writing about Antarctica published by VUP in 2004. It was shortlisted for the 2005 Montana New Zealand Book Awards.Bill has published many books of poetry (four times winning the New Zealand Book Award and the Poetry category in the 2006 Montana New Zealand Book Awards) and also a number of volumes of fiction. As an editor, he is responsible for a number of best-selling anthologies of New Zealand poetry and short stories, while a collection of his essays and interviews, Doubtful Sounds, was published by VUP in 2000. His regular conversations with Kim Hill on National Radio had a wide following and did much to raise interest in poetry throughout the country.His Collected Poems 1967-1999 was published by Victoria University Press in New Zealand in July 2001 and by Carcanet in the UK. He has also published a memoir in the Montana Estate Essay series called Under the Influence about growing up in the Otago and Southland pubs run by his family.In 2004 Bill was awarded the Katherine Mansfield Fellowship, NZ's most prestigious literary fellowship and he spent six months working at the Villa Isola Bella, Menton, in the south of France. In June 2005 Bill Manhire was appointed a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit and in November he was named as one of the five Arts Foundation of New Zealand 2005 Laureates. In December that year he received an honorary Doctorate of Literature from the University of Otago.Published in July 2005, his collection of poetry Lifted was universally acclaimed and it won the Poetry category in the 2006 Montana New Zealand Book Awards. It was published in the UK by Carcanet in January 2007.Most recently Bill has been involved with the editing and publication of Janet Frame's posthumous collection of poems, The Goose Bath, winner of the Poetry Prize in the 2007 Montana New Zealand Book Awards. He was also joint project leader of Are Angels OK?, a sci-art collaboration between leading New Zealand writers and physicists. In August 2007 Bill was named as the winner of the 2007 Prime Minister's Award for Poetry.