Sam Hunt (poet): Difference between revisions
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==Poet== |
==Poet== |
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Hunt has been a central figure in New Zealand literature since the publication of his first work ''From Bottle Creek: Selected Poems 1967–69'' in 1969, published when the poet was aged just 23. A number of Hunt's works share common themes and characters, such as the poems ''[[Porirua]] Friday Night'' and ''Girl with Black Eye in Grocer's Shop'', both of which feature the same female character. Hunt's friends and contemporaries included a number of well known New Zealand poets such as [[Denis Glover]], [[Alistair Campbell (poet)|Alistair Campbell]], and [[James K. Baxter]]. Baxter's poem ''Letter to Sam |
Hunt has been a central figure in New Zealand literature since the publication of his first work ''From Bottle Creek: Selected Poems 1967–69'' in 1969, published when the poet was aged just 23. A number of Hunt's works share common themes and characters, such as the poems ''[[Porirua]] Friday Night'' and ''Girl with Black Eye in Grocer's Shop'', both of which feature the same female character. Hunt's friends and contemporaries included a number of well known New Zealand poets such as [[Denis Glover]], [[Alistair Campbell (poet)|Alistair Campbell]], and [[James K. Baxter]]. Baxter's poem ''Letter to Sam Hun'' provided advice to the young Hunt.<ref>http://www.bookcouncil.org.nz/writers/huntsam.html</ref> He was a prolific writer in the 1970s-1990s period and he has had something of a [[renaissance]] from 2007. In April 2009, New Zealand musician [[David Kilgour (musician)|David Kilgour]], formally of cult band [[The Clean]], released an album on which poems by Hunt were reinvented as song lyrics. <ref>http://www.davidkilgour.com/falling.htm</ref> "Everything Hunt writes is geared for personal performance: his Lyrics are deliberately uncomplicated and colloquial; their traditional forms and regular rhythms allow 'the storis and myths [to be' fleshed and invested with energy and power' ". |
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==Published works== |
==Published works== |
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Revision as of 04:31, 14 May 2010
Sam Hunt (born in Castor Bay Auckland on 4 July 1946) is a New Zealand performance poet.[1] He has been referred to as New Zealand's best-known poet.[2]
Hunt was educated at St Peter's College, Auckland which he attended from 1958 to 1963.[3] At St Peter's, Hunt's individualism came into conflict with the Christian Brother's authoritarianism. (He has said that he was strapped at the age of 14 for reciting a poem by James K. Baxter which had sexual imagery, in the classroom.) Life was not made easier by a bad stutter, and poems working through the tensions and fantasies of adolescence became a form of release. Some of his earliers poems were published in the St Peter's College annual magazines.[4] Despite school's problems, Hunt, who was a good sprinter and diver, did not leave until asked to. He benefited, in his final year, from having poet Ken Arvidson as his English master, and he obtained University Entrance.[5] Ken Arvidson endowed a poetry prize at St Peter's. This was awarded to Sam Hunt in 1963. One of Hunt's most reproduced poems is Brother Lynch, a poem about a St Peter's College teacher, Brother J B Lynch, who was sympathetic to the young Hunt.[6] An annual literature competition at St Peter's College, is named after Sam Hunt, and he has acted as its judge.
Poet
Hunt has been a central figure in New Zealand literature since the publication of his first work From Bottle Creek: Selected Poems 1967–69 in 1969, published when the poet was aged just 23. A number of Hunt's works share common themes and characters, such as the poems Porirua Friday Night and Girl with Black Eye in Grocer's Shop, both of which feature the same female character. Hunt's friends and contemporaries included a number of well known New Zealand poets such as Denis Glover, Alistair Campbell, and James K. Baxter. Baxter's poem Letter to Sam Hun provided advice to the young Hunt.[7] He was a prolific writer in the 1970s-1990s period and he has had something of a renaissance from 2007. In April 2009, New Zealand musician David Kilgour, formally of cult band The Clean, released an album on which poems by Hunt were reinvented as song lyrics. [8] "Everything Hunt writes is geared for personal performance: his Lyrics are deliberately uncomplicated and colloquial; their traditional forms and regular rhythms allow 'the storis and myths [to be' fleshed and invested with energy and power' ".
Published works
- From Bottle Creek: Selected Poems 1967–69 (1969)
- Bracken Country (1971)
- From Bottle Creek (1972)
- Roadsong Paekakariki (1973)
- South Into Winter: Poems and Roadsongs (1973)
- Time To Ride (1975)
- Drunkard’s Garden (1977)
- Poems for the Eighties : New Poems (1979)
- Collected Poems 1963–1980 (1980)
- Running Scared (1982)
- Approaches To Paremata (1985)
- Selected Poems (1987)
- Making Tracks(1991)
- Naming the Gods (1992)
- Down the Backbone (1995)
- Roaring Forties (1997)
- Doubtless: new and selected poems (2008)
- Backroads, Charting a Poet's Life (2009)
References
- ^ HUNT, Sam
- ^ Making Tracks - Hazard Online
- ^ Rick Maxwell, St Peter's College, Auckland, Simerlocy press, Auckland, 2008, pp. 20, 36 and 37 (Note 183).
- ^ St Peter's College Magazines, 1963 and 1964
- ^ Roger Robinson and Nelson Wattie, "Sam Hunt", The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature, Oxford University Press, Auckland, 1998, pp. 589 and 590.
- ^ Sam Hunt: Selected Poems, Penguin Books, Auckland, 1987, p. 63.
- ^ http://www.bookcouncil.org.nz/writers/huntsam.html
- ^ http://www.davidkilgour.com/falling.htm
External links
- Sam Hunt on the NZ Book Council website
- Sam Hunt at New Zealand Literature File, the University of Auckland Library
- Sam Hunt at NZETC
- Sam Hunt at NZ OnScreen.
- Stuff: the Sam Hunt Interview
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