David Howard (poet)

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David Howard (* 1959 in Christchurch ) is a New Zealand poet and editor . He is a co-founder and first editor of the New Zealand literary magazine Takahē . He is also a founding member of the Canterbury Poets Collective, which promotes young poets around the University of Canterbury in Christchurch. His poems have already been translated into many European languages.

David Howard during his 2016 visit to Prague

Life

David Howard initially worked as a specialist in pyrotechnics and special effects . His clientele included acts like the All Blacks , Janet Jackson and Metallica . In 2003 he retired from this professional life to live and write in Purakanui in the Otago region . Howard says he enjoys the world's indifference to his designs there.

Howard was already a co-founder in 1989 and at the beginning also editor of the New Zealand literary magazine Takahē, which was named after a flightless bird from New Zealand. In 1993, however, he left the editorial team. For the 25th Anniversary Takahē Poetry Competition in 2014, Howard was the responsible juror. In 1990 he founded the Canterbury Poets Collective , or CPC for short, in Christchurch . The name is based on the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, in whose environment the CPC organizes open mic evenings for young poets with well-known guest appearances.

In February 2009, Howard received a grant from the International Writers' Program to participate in the International Poetry Festival in Granada, Nicaragua . From March to April 2016 he was visiting Europe, especially in Prague , where he received a grant as a city clerk within the framework of the Creative Cities Network .

Work and reception

Since his first book publication in 1991, David Howard has taken an active part in the cross-genre cultural work of his Otago region, his homeland of New Zealand and the western world. In his first book, In the First Place, photographs by the New Zealand director and producer Paul Swadel were shown.

Harriet Zinnes from the Denver Quarterly (USA) wrote in 2000 about Howard's third book Shebang: Collected Poems 1980–2000 : “[…] the frank sweep of the lines and also its intellectual precision […] have a kind of contemporary poetry, that is, a poetry "Excessiveness eschews tenderness and desire, even when it questions their persistence, and even their power."

In 2003 a collaboration with photographer Fiona Pardington took place under the title How to Occupy Our Selves . A year later he wrote the poem The Folly of Honest Men for the New Zealand photographer Dean J. Nixon, who lives in Leipzig, as part of his project on the Karl Heine Canal . The Creative New Zealand project funding has enabled Howard to collect works on Central and Eastern Europe since 2002, again in cooperation with artists from other genres. The poem There you go was set to music in 2007 by the Czech composer Marta Jiráčková . In the same year, the Slovenian composer Brina Jez-Brezavscek worked on Howard's work The Flax Heckler , which was published in a limited edition in 2009 under the title Dead Man Blues .

But Howard also dealt with typical New Zealand topics at the beginning of the new millennium. In 2006, The Word Went Round appeared , in which Howard deals with the wave of immigration from Ireland in the 19th century. The painter Garry Currin contributed to the publication meditative seascapes. When he appeared, former Te Mata Poet Laureate Brian Turner assessed : “Howard has his own ways of saying, and, something not all poets can claim, things to say. (Howard has his own way of saying something, and what not all poets can say, he has something to say.) " Bernard Gadd once wrote in his review of the New Zealand Poetry Society website :

"Nonetheless, this book as a whole is another collection of well wrought and mature poetry from David Howard, another which libraries should have."

"Nonetheless, this book on the whole is another collection of well-crafted and mature poetry by David Howard, another book that libraries should have."

- Bernard Gadd : New Zealand Poetry Society

David Howard's works are part of numerous anthologies such as New Zealand Love Poems (2000), Shards of Silver (2006), Painted Poems (2007), New Zealand Poets in Performance (2008), Land Very Fertile (2008), Swings + Roundabouts (2008 ), A Good Handful (2008) and Our Own Kind (2009). His works are translated into German , Italian , Slovenian , Spanish and Czech .

Michael Harlow, Robert Burns Fellow of the University of Otago in 2010, says of him: “Surely, David Howard is one of the most original voices in New Zealand poetry. (David Howard is certainly one of the most original voices in New Zealand poetry.) “In 2013, even a Robert Burns Fellow, Howard wrote The Speak House with the subtitle A Poem in Fifty-Seven Pentastichs on the Final Hours in the Life of Robert Louis Stevenson ( A poem in 57 five-liners about the last hours in the life of Robert Louis Stevenson). He uses woodcuts by Stevenson himself as an illustration. Starting from the idiom, seeing one's own life pass by before one's eyes , Howard creates a feverish series of impressions that Stevenson may have experienced in his last hours. Denys Trussell from Landfall Review writes: “Howard has composed not so much a stream of consciousness, but a final and enigmatic streaming of unconsciousness. (Howard did not create a stream of consciousness so much as a final and subtle stream of the unconscious.) "

David Howard's latest work shows him in the role of editor and keeper. The works of the late historian and poet Iain Lonie (1932–1988) were collected by Howard and published under the title A Place to Go On From and saved for posterity. The New Zealand Poet Laureate Vincent O'Sullivan comments: "I can't imagine how we could over estimate just how much we owe to David Howard for this superb edition of Iain Lonie's poems. Just as I, for one, can't sidestep a certain shame at not realizing until now how fine and important a writer Lonie was. (I can't imagine how we could overestimate what we owe David Howard for his excellent edition of Iain Lonie's poems. Just like me a certain Shame cannot prevent not having noticed until today how excellent and important the writer Lonie was.) "

Bibliography (selection)

As an author

  • Shebang: collected poems 1980–2000 - with pictures by Jason Greig; Steele Roberts, Wellington 2000, ISBN 1-877228-59-1 .
  • The Word Went Round - with paintings by Gary Currin; Otago University Press, Dunedin 2006, ISBN 1-877372-31-5 .
  • The Incomplete Poems ; Cold Hub Press, Governor's Bay, Lyttelton 2011, ISBN 978-0-473-18986-0 .
  • You Look So Pretty When You're Unfaithful to Me - with prints by Peter Ransom; Holloway Press, Auckland 2012.
  • The Speak House ; Cold Hub Press, Governor's Bay, Lyttelton 2014, ISBN 978-0-473-28364-3 .

As editor

  • Takahē issues 1–16 (with Mike Minehan and Bernadette Hall); Takahē Publishing Collective, Christchurch 1989-93.
  • A Place To Go On From: the Collected Poems of Iain Lonie ; Otago University Press, Dunedin 2015, ISBN 978-1-927322-01-7 .

Awards

  • New Zealand Society of Authors Mid-Career Writers' Award (2009)
  • University of South Pacific Poetry Prize (2011)
  • Robert Burns Fellowship (2013)
  • Otago Wallace Residency (2014)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d bookcouncil.org.nz New Zealand Book Council website , accessed July 21, 2015
  2. ↑ victoria.ac.nz website Victoria University , accessed on July 21, 2015
  3. ↑ David Howard : 2014 Takahē Poetry Competition . In: takahē magazine . The Takahē Collective , October 29, 2014, accessed April 23, 2018 .
  4. ↑ prahamestoliteratury.cz website of the UNESCO City of Literature Prague , accessed on April 7, 2016
  5. ^ Bernard Gadd : The Word Went Round . New Zealand Poetry Society , archived from the original on January 22, 2016 ; accessed on April 23, 2018 (English, original website no longer available).
  6. ↑ coldhubpress.co.nz Website of the Cold Hub Press publisher , accessed July 21, 2015
  7. ↑ landfallreview.com site of landfall Review Online Otago University Press, accessed on July 21, 2015
  8. ↑ poetlaureate.org.nz New Zealand Poet Laureate website , accessed July 21, 2015
  9. ↑ otago.ac.nz website of the University of Otago , accessed July 21, 2015
  10. ↑ otago.ac.nz Press release from the University of Otago , accessed on July 21, 2015
personal data
SURNAME Howard, David
BRIEF DESCRIPTION New Zealand poet and editor
DATE OF BIRTH 1959
PLACE OF BIRTH Christchurch , New Zealand