Friday, November 30, 2007

Curnow, Allen


[Photograph: Marti Friedlander]

Allen Curnow (1911-2001)


Contents:

Classic New Zealand Poets in Performance (2006):

House and Land
The Unhistoric Story
The Skeleton of the Great Moa in the Canterbury Museum, Christchurch
A Dead Lamb
Any Time Now


Aotearoa NZ Poetry Sound Archive (2004):

CD08

1. Gare SNCF Garavan
2. The Kindest Thing
3. Narita
4. Do Not Touch the Exhibits
5. Things to Do with Moonlight [1-3]
6. Looking West, Late Afternoon, Low Water
7. Early Days Yet [1-3]
8. The Scrap-book [1-3]
9. The Bells of Saint Babel’s [1-5]
10. Ten Steps to the Sea [1-10]
11. Fantasia and Fugue for Pan-pipe [1-4]
12. House and Land
13. The Unhistoric Story
14. The Skeleton of the Great Moa in the Canterbury Museum, Christchurch
15. A Leaf
16. The Loop in Lone Kauri Road


New Zealand Poets Read Their Work (1974):

LP 1, side 2

Lone Kauri Road
Two Pedestrians with One Thought
Magnificat


Waiata Archive (1974):

CD 1

Lone Kauri Road
Friendship Heights
An Upper Room
A Dead Lamb
A Framed Photograph
Two Pedestrians with One Thought
Magnificat
A Four Letter Word
A Hot Time
Anytime Now


Bio /Bibliography:

Allen Curnow was born in Timaru, New Zealand, in 1911. He was educated at the Universities of Canterbury and Auckland. After a period of study for the Anglican ministry, he worked for the Press newspaper and the News Chronicle (London) before teaching at the University of Auckland (1951-76) as lecturer and associate professor of English. His first book of poems appeared in 1933; it was followed by many others. He edited anthologies, including The Penguin Book of New Zealand Verse (1961), continued to write poems, plays and criticism and travelled widely. He read and recorded his poems for major universities and the Library of Congress, for the BBC and Australian radio, as well as for the Poetry Society (London), the Cambridge Poetry Festival, the Toronto International Festival of Authors, the Voice Box and the International Poetry Festival at Southbank Centre. He held the Litt.D. degrees from the University of Auckland and (honoris causa) Auckland and Canterbury. He received the New Zealand Book Award for Poetry seven times. He was made a CBE in 1986, was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 1989, the ONZ in 1990 and the Cholmondeley Award for Poetry in 1992. He died in 2001.

Select Biblio:

Valley of Decision, Auckland: Auckland University College Students’ Assoc., 1933
Enemies: Poems, 1934-36, Christchurch: Caxton Press, 1937
Not in Narrow Seas: Poems with Prose, Christchurch: Caxton Press, 1939
Island and Time, Christchurch: Caxton Press, 1941
Recent Poems, (with A.R.D. Fairbum, Denis Glover, and R.A.K.Mason), Christchurch: Caxton Press, 1941
Sailing or Drowning, Wellington: Progressive Publishing Society, 1944
Poems, Jack without Magic, Christchurch: Caxton Press, 1946
At Dead Low Water and Sonnets, Christchurch: Caxton Press, 1949
Poems, 1949-57, Wellington: Mermaid Press, 1957
A Small Room with Large Windows: Selected Poems, London: Oxford University Press, 1962
Trees, Effigies, Moving Objects: A Sequence of Poems, Wellington: Catspaw Press, 1972
An Abominable Temper and Other Poems, Wellington: Catspaw Press, 1973
Collected Poems, 1933-73, Wellington: Reed, 1974
An Incorrigible Music: A Sequence of Poems, Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1979
Selected Poems, Auckland: Penguin, 1982
You Will Know When You Get There: Poems 1979-81, Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1982
The Loop in Lone Kauri Road: Poems 1983-85, Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1986
Continuum: New and Later Poems, 1972-88, Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1988
Selected Poems, 1940-89, London: Penguin Books, 1990
Penguin Modern Poets (with Donald Davie and Samuel Menashe), London: Penguin Books, 1996
Early Days Yet: New and Collected Poems 1941-1997, Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1997
The Bells of Saint Babel’s, Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2001

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