When Charles Brasch died, in 1973, he specified that his private papers - his diaries, letters, and many of his manuscripts - be placed under embargo for thirty years after his death. The external details of his life were, by this time, well-known. He had become a high-profile figure in the field of New Zealand literature, through his critical writings, his role as 'patron', and particularly his twenty- year editorship of the periodical Landfall. Yet his reputation as a poet, although established, was neglected both then and now. His poetry is one of central relevance to a contemporary scene; as clearly as any, it reveals the difficulty of writing for, and about, a society which still laboured under the weight of a 'colonial' stigma. By tracing the movement from his juvenilia to his mature poetry, from his teenage years to adulthood, this study examines the effect of Brasch's personal development on his writing. Partly because of the embargo on his papers, partly because of his secretive nature, his private life has remained a shadow behind poetry which is itself often ambiguous; yet his creative progression was largely determined by the events of this life, both external and internal. Previously, little has been known or written about the decade and a half he spent in Europe. These were crucial years, both in shaping his editorial vision, and in the discovery of his own poetic voice. By means of personal interviews, and recourse to letters in private collections, his story is told: from his arrival in Oxford in 1927, to his final acceptance of New Zealand as his home, in 1945. The first chapter outlines the three years he spent at St John's College, and the general literary context in which he began to write. Chapter Two covers his brief foray into archaeology, and the resultant poetry and unpublished fiction. The importance of German literature - particularly that of Rilke - to his work becomes the focus of Chapter Three. As a direct result of this influence, the second half of the 1930s was dominated by his search for a voice, and a subject, of his own. Chapter Four details this struggle, and the first tentative New Zealand element in his work. A teaching job at Great Missenden - the subject of Chapter Five - temporarily distracted Brasch from developing this theme, yet sources reveal that the country of his birth was never far from his mind. Chapters Six and Seven deal with the effect on his poetry of the growing unease in Europe, the difficult split of allegiances to two hemispheres, and his subsequent commitment to England for the duration of the war. Throughout 1944-5, he became involved in script-writing, and the eighth and final chapter examines the extent of his success in this new genre. His return to New Zealand, late in 1945, marked the apparent beginning of a career which, nonetheless, had its origins in experiences half a world away.

Thesis (M.A. English)--University of Waikato, 2007. / Title from PDF cover (viewed March 31, 2008) Includes bibliographical references (p. 160-178)

This thesis analyses the poetry contained in anthologies published between the 1940s and 1980s in New Zealand and that of some later anthologies that retrospectively covered the same period. I wanted to find out what subject matter preoccupied poets during these times, to monitor changes in the content of that poetry and to observe what techniques were used and the evolution of styles. Complimentary to the study of the poetry is an evaluation of the intentions of the editors of the anthologies and how much their selections were directed by their tastes and knowledge to form a kind of 'construct', or representation of the publishing of poetry. From my reading, I conjectured that the literary canon with regard to poetry was formed in New Zealand by the mid-1970s, on the strength of publications from Penguin and Oxford University Press. The 1945 and 1960 anthologies by Allen Curnow were extremely influential - particularly the second of these two - and the editors of future anthologies from the larger publishers diverged comparatively little from his choices. Curnow's anthologies are the subject of Chapter One, and in Chapter Two, I look at Vincent O'Sullivan's series of three anthologies for Oxford (1970, 1976 and 1987), which confirmed and expanded that canon. However, from the mid-1960s, and especially in the early 1970s, new trends emerged in New Zealand writing, linked to a consciousness of post-modernist literary theory. Some of the new trends, together with material that supplemented existing perspectives on poetry, are discussed in Chapter Three. The greater degree of acknowledgement of writing by women poets - which began in the late 1960s in smaller literary journals - reached a point where the first anthology of women's poetry, Private Gardens, could be published in 1977. The first major anthology to be edited by a woman appeared five years later. The gradualness of these changes is stressed, however, with regard to women's poetry included in the larger anthologies themselves. A new bias emerged in the late 1970s and 1980s in favour of work from the University presses. Nevertheless, anthologies that presented some alternative point of view on our literary history proliferated at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Taken together, the anthologies Big Smoke and Real Fire form a more holistic picture of what went on in the 1960s and 1970s and are discussed in Chapter Four of this thesis. Concluding remarks focus on the prejudices that appear to have guided the publishing of poetry in New Zealand anthologies, the influence of major poets, and the possibilities for further study of this body of literature.

The Maori people - those Polynesians who moved to the cooler islands of New Zealand - possessed a mythology that matched their own great qualities. They had a myth of the Creation that rivals Genesis in beauty, a pantheon of gods and heroes who can be mentioned in the same breath as those of the Greeks, and a store of splendid tribal histories, half factual, half fabulous, ... These are the opening lines of the Preface to a recently published selection of Maori myths and legends in translation: they indicate how strongly many modern New Zealanders are attracted to the various forms of Maori literature. But this is no new phenomen. For the receptive Pakeha mind has been fascinated by Maori mythology since the very beginnings of European settlement in New Zealand. Indeed, if anything, the magnetic appeal of Maori myth and legend was probably most evident in the earliest years of intercultural contact. Thomas Kendall was one of the first missionaries to work among the Maori people. Unlike most of his fellow-evangelists, Kendall determined to study and so understand the religion and customs of his adopted flock. Unfortunately, this �tragic, Faustian figure� was soon out of his depth. Kendall wrote, I am now, after a long, anxious, and painful study, arriving at the very foundation and groundwork of the cannibalism and superstitions of these islanders. All their notions are metaphysical, and I have been so poisoned withh the apparent sublimity of their ideas that I have been almost completely turned from a Christian to a heathen. Another early missionary, Richard Taylor, also studied Maori beliefs in depth. But Taylor, though he felt impelled by his inter-course with the Maori to write a long and influential treatise on his interpretation of Maoritanga, did manage to retain a degree of scholarly objectivity towards his subject. Yet even so, Taylor acknowledges in his treatise that, The Maori mythology is extremely interesting, and quite different from what we should expect from a people sunk in barbarism. ... Their ideas in some respects are not so puerile, as those even of the more civilized heathens of old, and without the light of inspiration, could not be expected to be more advanced. Nor were secular scholars immune to "Maori fever." Sir George Grey wrote of the Maori that � their traditions are puerile� and their �religious faith ... is absurd�. Yet during the eight years that he was Governor of the nascent colony of New Zealand in a period of constant interracial stress, Grey devoted a great deal of what little spare time he had to the collection and publication of the myths and legends, and �the ancient traditional poems, religious chants, and songs, of the Maori race�-- Introduction. Four poets are considered: Alfred Domett (1811-1887), Arthur Henry Adams (1872-1936), Jessie Mackay (1864-1938), Blanche E. Baughan (1870-1958).

The Maori people - those Polynesians who moved to the cooler islands of New Zealand - possessed a mythology that matched their own great qualities. They had a myth of the Creation that rivals Genesis in beauty, a pantheon of gods and heroes who can be mentioned in the same breath as those of the Greeks, and a store of splendid tribal histories, half factual, half fabulous, ... These are the opening lines of the Preface to a recently published selection of Maori myths and legends in translation: they indicate how strongly many modern New Zealanders are attracted to the various forms of Maori literature. But this is no new phenomen. For the receptive Pakeha mind has been fascinated by Maori mythology since the very beginnings of European settlement in New Zealand. Indeed, if anything, the magnetic appeal of Maori myth and legend was probably most evident in the earliest years of intercultural contact. Thomas Kendall was one of the first missionaries to work among the Maori people. Unlike most of his fellow-evangelists, Kendall determined to study and so understand the religion and customs of his adopted flock. Unfortunately, this �tragic, Faustian figure� was soon out of his depth. Kendall wrote, I am now, after a long, anxious, and painful study, arriving at the very foundation and groundwork of the cannibalism and superstitions of these islanders. All their notions are metaphysical, and I have been so poisoned withh the apparent sublimity of their ideas that I have been almost completely turned from a Christian to a heathen. Another early missionary, Richard Taylor, also studied Maori beliefs in depth. But Taylor, though he felt impelled by his inter-course with the Maori to write a long and influential treatise on his interpretation of Maoritanga, did manage to retain a degree of scholarly objectivity towards his subject. Yet even so, Taylor acknowledges in his treatise that, The Maori mythology is extremely interesting, and quite different from what we should expect from a people sunk in barbarism. ... Their ideas in some respects are not so puerile, as those even of the more civilized heathens of old, and without the light of inspiration, could not be expected to be more advanced. Nor were secular scholars immune to "Maori fever." Sir George Grey wrote of the Maori that � their traditions are puerile� and their �religious faith ... is absurd�. Yet during the eight years that he was Governor of the nascent colony of New Zealand in a period of constant interracial stress, Grey devoted a great deal of what little spare time he had to the collection and publication of the myths and legends, and �the ancient traditional poems, religious chants, and songs, of the Maori race�-- Introduction. Four poets are considered: Alfred Domett (1811-1887), Arthur Henry Adams (1872-1936), Jessie Mackay (1864-1938), Blanche E. Baughan (1870-1958).

Janet Frame (1924-2004) is known for being one of the most prolific, translated, and unconventional New Zealand novelists. Her work, however, includes a vast production of poems, which scholars and translators have ignored or, at least, not considered worthy for a comprehensive approach to her. Frame's work has undergone the further limitation of a strongly biography-based hermeneutics: from the gossiping around her alleged schizophrenia, to the popularity of the filmic version of her autobiography (An Angel at My Table) by Jane Campion, and the countless legends that have sprung around her, she has often been stigmatised and labelled the 'mad writer' of Campion's movie. This thesis links the risks of the life/myth-driven perspectives to the current lack of interest in Frame's poetry. Her poetic production is here presented as a fundamental part of her oeuvre and her idiosyncratic approach to writing. Therefore, this study aims to fill this gap in the literature on Frame and thus reconfigure her role as a poet. Through a combination of methodologies grounded in literary and verse translation theories, creativity and genre studies, poststructuralism and postcolonialism, this thesis investigates the most significant traits of Frame's prose and poetry, particularly the traits shared by both. It critiques past translations of Frame's prose into Italian where these have not taken into account the poetic value of her work, and suggests strategies for the translation of her verse into Italian, arguing that an informed approach to her poetry in translation may greatly contribute to a reconfiguration and re-evaluation of her legacy.