Collected Poems, 1951-2006

Description

This Collected Poems includes the work of fourteen volumes of poetry, from Stead's first collection, Whether the Will is Free, to The Black River of 2007. In addition, it reprints 22 early previously uncollected poems that date from 1951 to 1961. Annotated by the author, the Collected Poems illustrates more than fifty years of the range and ambition of Stead's verse, in which the world always looks 'hard / at the word and the / word at the world'.

C k Stead was born in Auckland in 1932. During the 1950s and 1960s, he earned an international reputation as a poet and literary critic. He has published fourteen books of poetry, eleven novels, two books of short stories and seven books of criticism. Stead is professor emeritus of English at The University of Auckland where he taught for twenty years. He was made CBE in 1974 and a member of the Order of New Zealand in 2007, elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1995, appointed an Honorary Visiting Fellow of St John's College, Oxford, in 1997 and awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Letters by the University of Bristol in 2001. He is married with three children and (to date) six grandchildren.

"This ancient poetic themehow to live in order to live beyond liferuns throughout this massive book, unifying the staggering profusion of forms and contents and linguistic registers." "The Australian"" "Almost always easy on the ear, so that, despite its great length, the book is highly readable." --New Zealand Herald "This ancient poetic theme--how to live in order to live beyond life--runs throughout this massive book, unifying the staggering profusion of forms and contents and linguistic registers." --The Australian