Peter Olds

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Peter Olds
New Zealand poet Peter Olds, photographed in Dunedin, October 2014
New Zealand poet Peter Olds, photographed in Dunedin, October 2014
Born1944 (age 76–77)
Christchurch, New Zealand
GenrePoetry
Notable awardsRobert Burns Fellowship

Peter Olds (born 1944) is a New Zealand poet who was born in Christchurch and lives in Dunedin. He is regarded as being a significant contributor within New Zealand literary circles, in particular, having an influence with younger poets in the 1970s. He has held the University of Otago Robert Burns Fellowship and was the inaugural winner of the Janet Frame Literary Award. During the 1970s he spent time in the community of Jerusalem with James K Baxter.

Selected publications[]

Early work[]

Olds left school at 15, settled in Dunedin in the mid-60s and began writing in 1966, completing a one-act play while he was employed by the Globe Theatre building stage sets.[1] In 1968 he suffered a breakdown, and after spending time in a mental hospital, joined James K. Baxter at the Jerusalem commune, returning to Dunedin in 1971 in order to write his first volume of poetry, Lady Moss Revived (1972).[1] This was followed by V-8 Poems (1972), The Snow and the Glass Window (1973), Freeway (1974), Doctor’s Rock (1976) and Beethoven’s Guitar and After Looking for Broadway (1980). His published broadsheets include Exit: 2 Poems (1971), Schizophrenic Highway (1971),[2] and The Habits You Left Behind: Poem (1972). He replied to his friend James K. Baxter's poem Letter to Peter Olds (1972) with his Doctor’s Rock.[3]

Later collections[]

Poetry Reading at Kaka Point was published in 2006,[4] and In the Dragon Cafe, which features Letter to Hone Tuwhare in 2007.[5] Under the Dundas Street Bridge, previewed as being "personal...the author takes us tripping down alleyways of his own confusion: waterbottle in backpack, notepad in hand, stalking the town like an evangelist on a mission", was released in 2012.[6] In 2014 You fit the description: the selected poems of Peter Olds was published.[7] A review of the book by the publisher included an introduction by Ian Wedde.[8]

Impact on the NZ literary scene[]

The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature notes that Olds was "considered a central figure to many younger poets in the 1970s because of his ability to incorporate rebellious detail of contemporary experience with music, drugs and the concerns and language of the street."[9] When promoting a symposium to Olds in September 2019, the University of Otago published [that] "Peter Olds' writing has been important to poets and other readers of New Zealand poetry since the 1970s, bringing to the centre of attention the unidentified, unclaimed, the marginal, the dispossessed, the trespasser, but also the exuberant, the childish, the lively and the conversational."[10]

David Eggleton has said of him as a poet:

Olds is a master of laconic comedy, offering us delicate absurdist perceptions robustly expressed: childhood winter mornings in an antiquated Christchurch, a portrait of his father as 'a clergyman sitting up in bed ... rolling a racehorse cigarette', a glancing view of a dog described as ' a walking/ chucked-out bargain-basement carpet'...Olds weaves a consciousness of the moment into a personal mythography.[11]

Influences on his work[]

Influences on his poetry include American rock'n'roll, the 1950s beat poetry of Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, and many aspects from the counter-culture of the time such as drugs, sex and depression are regular themes, particularly in his early poetry.[12] The Poet Laureate, David Eggleton argued that Olds' personal vision in his poems is reflected in "life, death, greed, humanity, poverty, gentrification, Methodism, bees, love, spirituality, medication, buses, trains, clapped-out pre-War Fords, and an immaculately restored white Oldsmobile Convertible with pink vinyl hood...echoing Jack Keouac's On the Road...the beat generation, reaching New Zealand and its 1950s bodgies and widgies, and reaching Peter Olds, too, as he recalled in his 2012 jukebox poem 'Love Me Do/1963'."[11]

A friendship with James K. Baxter influenced what has been called the romantic tendency toward "reflective narratives of circumstantial personal experience" in his poetry.[12] Being the son of a Methodist minister, Olds also shared a religious background with Baxter and one commentator has noted that it is "easy to see how such early influences could lead the young Olds to identify with the vatic power of language and poetry’s associated mystique...[and see]... Baxter as a liberating example of the poet-seer’s defiant non-conformity."[12]

When his poem At Murdering Beach was published, Olds shared one aspect of his inspiration:

I love to go to places of interest where people once lived in pre-European times. I like to imagine what it was like for those who had only a bone and stone technology between themselves and extinction. In the year 2000 & something, Murdering Beach (Whareakeake) is not a bad place for a picnic and a swim. Some surfers find good swells out among the black rocks beyond the cliffs at the ends of the beach.[13]

When the Dunedin City Council published A Town trod by Poets (2020), to celebrate the city being designated as a UNESCO Creative City of Literature,[14] Olds said he had "always wanted to be a photographer...I love the visual in poetry — this [book] was a great opportunity to marry the two."[15]

Awards[]

  • Olds held the Robert Burns Fellowship in 1978.[16]
  • A work by Olds, Disjointed on Wellington Railway Station was selected for Best New Zealand Poems 2001.[3]
  • In 2005 Olds was the first recipient of the Janet Frame Literary Trust Award for Poetry.[17]

References[]

  1. ^ a b "Peter Olds". New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre (nzepc). Retrieved 31 March 2021.
  2. ^ Olds, Peter (1972). Schizophrenic highway (2 (First edition published 1971) ed.). National Library: Montgomery Press. p. 5. Retrieved 31 March 2021.
  3. ^ a b "About the Author: Olds, Peter". Read NZ Te Pou Muramura. Retrieved 31 March 2021.
  4. ^ Olds, Peter (1 November 2006). Poetry reading at Kaka Point. Wheelers Books: Steele Roberts Aotearoa Ltd. p. 61. ISBN 9781877338960. Retrieved 31 March 2021.
  5. ^ Olds, Peter (2007). In the dragon cafe. National Library: Kilmog Press. p. 16. ISBN 9780473119775. Retrieved 31 March 2021.
  6. ^ Olds, Peter (30 September 2012). Under the Dundas Street Bridge. Wheelers Books: Steele Roberts Aotearoa Ltd. p. 70. ISBN 9781877577833. Retrieved 31 March 2021.
  7. ^ Olds, Peter (2014). You fit the description the selected poems of Peter Olds (Poems) (First ed.). Cold Hub Press. ISBN 9780473298036. OL 31253555M. Retrieved 31 March 2021.
  8. ^ You fit the description. The selected poems of Peter Olds (Review). Cold Hub Press. Retrieved 31 March 2021.
  9. ^ Robinson, Roger; Wattie, Nelson (1998). The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature. Oxford University. p. 431. ISBN 0-19-558348-5.
  10. ^ Events. "Noticing Peter Olds: A symposium on the Dunedin poet". University of Otago. Retrieved 31 March 2021.
  11. ^ a b Eggleton, David (16 October 2019). "Taking a Line for a Walk: The Poetry of Peter Olds". New Zealand Poet Laureate. Retrieved 31 March 2021.
  12. ^ a b c Reeve, Richard (1 May 2015). "you fit the description: The selected poems of Peter Olds". Landfall Review. Retrieved 31 March 2021.
  13. ^ Entwistle, Peter (1998). Behold the Moon Cited in: Orangahau Best New Zealand Poems. Daniel Press, Dunedin. Retrieved 31 March 2021.
  14. ^ A Town Trod by Poets. Dunedin Public Libraries. October 2020. Retrieved 31 March 2021.
  15. ^ Gibb, John (24 October 2020). "Streets of city put to verse". Otago Daily Times. Retrieved 31 March 2021.
  16. ^ "The Robert Burns Fellowship - previous recipients since the Fellowship was established". University of Otago. Retrieved 31 March 2021.
  17. ^ 2005 Inaugural Janet Frame Literary Trust Awards. "Janet Frame Literary Trust Awards". Janet Frame (Official Web Site of the Janet Frame Estate). Retrieved 31 March 2021.

External links[]

  1. ^ "Search the List | Dunedin Harbourside Historic Area | Heritage New Zealand".
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