|
Profile
Kevin Ireland, poet, short story writer, novelist and librettist, is
one of New Zealand’s best-loved writers. His poetry is known especially
for his spare and witty style, his resolute minimalism, his regular use of imagery
and extended metaphors, his carefully patterned forms and recurring themes of
love.
Selected published works
Under the Bridge and Over the Moon,
1998, Montana New Zealand Book Awards 1999; Backwards to Forwards - A Memoir, 2002; How to Catch a Fish: The Ginger Series, 2005.
Kevin Ireland's poetry can be found here.
Publishers
Hazard Press www.hazardpress.com
Random House New Zealand www.randomhouse.co.nz
Biography
Kevin Ireland was born in Auckland in 1933. He spent twenty-five years
in England before returning to New Zealand in the early 1980s.
He was winner of the 1977 New Zealand Book Award for Poetry, was writer-in-residence
at Canterbury University in 1986, the Sargeson Fellow in 1987, the University
of Auckland’s Literary Fellow in 1989, assistant editor of the influential
literary journal, Quote Unquote, and, in 1990–91, president of
PEN (New Zealand Centre). In 1990 he received an Officer of the Order of the
British Empire for Services to Literature.
Ireland has also published a collection of short stories, Sleeping with
the Angels (1995), and four novels. The first volume of his memoir, Under
the Bridge and Over the Moon, won the History and Biography category of
the 1999 Montana New Zealand Book Awards, and in 2000 he was made an Honorary
Doctor of Literature by Massey University. Ireland received the 2004 Prime Minister’s
Award for Literary Achievement for Poetry.
|
