Making Canons and Finding Flowers - A Study of Selected New Zealand

ISBN-13: 9783639028737 / Angielski / Miękka / 2008 / 148 str.

Owen Bullock

Opis

This book evaluates a sample of New Zealand Poetry Anthologies covering the 1940s to the 1980s. It assesses how the intentions, knowledge and tastes of the anthology editors have influenced the representation of New Zealand poetry. Changes in the content of the poetry are observed, as well as the techniques that were used. Allen Curnows influential anthologies of 1945 and 1960 were concerned mostly with the topic of literary nationalism. From the mid-1960s, trends emerged linked to possibilities offered by American poetry and perhaps to a search for greater freedom of expression in general. By the mid-1970s, New Zealands poetic canon was well established on the strength of publications from Penguin and Oxford University Press, but poetry by women seemed under-represented. Despite increased publication of writing by women poets from the late 1960s onwards, many years passed before womens writing was fully acknowledged in major anthologies. A new bias emerged in the late 1970s and 1980s in favour of work from the University Presses, but, in recent years, anthologies that present some alternative point of view of New Zealands literary history have proliferated.

O autorze

Bullock, Owen Owen Bullock, M.A. (Hons), studied English at the University of Waikato. His poetry has been published in New Zealand and overseas. He is Associate Editor of Poetry NZ and co-editor of Kokako - a haiku journal. Originally from Cornwall, he came to New Zealand in 1989. Owen teaches creative writing for the Waiariki Institute of Technology.