Duncan, Grant

Grant Duncan (b. 1960)

Contents:

Aotearoa NZ Poetry Sound Archive (2004):

CD10

1. L'Orto Botanico
2. Cocktail
3. Airmail from Tuscany
4. The Flying Vixen [recording truncated]
[4a. The Flying Vixen - YouTube version: complete]
5. The melancholy seaman
6. Homage to a dead poet
7. An undecidedly spring day
8. Desire
9. Lunch with my father
10. Western
11. Nocturne
12. Crepusculum
13. Fingered
14. Precious

Bio / Bibliography:

Grant Duncan was born in Hastings in 1960, and attended Raureka Primary School and Heretaunga Intermediate. After one year at Hastings Boys’ High School (from which he was expelled on his last day for refusing to cut his hair), the family moved to Auckland, where his father built a house at Beachlands. Grant completed his high-school education at Pakuranga College where he acquired a love of Shakespeare and Renaissance art. He attended Auckland University, completing a BA in psychology in 1980, an MA in 1984 and a PhD in 1989, and was a regular contributor to poetry readings in Auckland throughout those years. His daughter Pansy was born in 1983. In 1990, he spent a year in Italy, attending the University of Siena. He began a lectureship in social sciences at Massey University’s new Albany campus in 1993. Grant was a member of the group that initiated and published the literary journal Printout from 1991 to 1997. He edited issues 1 and 9. In recent years, he has had little involvement in literary life in this country.

Some memorable publications include:

Poems:

‘A lesson in light’, Sport 5 (1990) p. 120.
‘An expedition to explore the interior’, Kunapipi 12(1) (1991) pp. 70-75 (University of Aarhus).
‘Airmail from Tuscany: To Pansy Duncan’, Sport 6 (1991) p. 139-141.
‘L’Orto Botanico’, ‘Cocktail’, ‘The Flying Vixen’, ‘Renaissance naturalist’, Landfall 179 (1991) pp. 317-320.
‘The melancholy seaman’, ‘Moving star 1’, Snafu 2 (1993) p. 42.
‘Airmail from Tuscany: A picture postcard’, Poetry NZ 8 (1994) p. 36.
‘Homage to a dead poet’, Ariel : a review of international English literature 26(2) (1995) p. 40 (University of Calgary).
‘Some angels’, Southerly 56(4) (1996) p. 57 (University of Sydney).
‘Palfrey’s rubbish’, Spin 39 (2001), pp. 22-4.
‘Epidaurus’, Complete with Instructions (2001), p. 15 (ed. D. Howard; Firebrand).
‘Western’, brief #24 (2002), pp. 15-16.

Volumes of verse:

Dreams of falling (Punga Press, 1981)
Away with words (ESAW, 1986).

Essays:

‘The Narration of Pain and Suffering: Culture, meaning, healing’, Complete with Instructions (2001), pp. 15-21 (ed. D. Howard; Firebrand).
‘Nationhood and writing: Why poetry doesn’t matter anymore’, Poetry NZ 24 (2002), pp. 80-86.