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Elizabeth SmitherFriday 23 August 7.30-10pm once and for all |
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'I scribble rather than write, very rapidly in notebooks. . . . Sometimes I visualise a more leisurely, scholarly kind of existence: writing mornings, walking and reading in the afternoon. I am extremely suspicious of the artistic process. If it wasn’t for the occasional result the whole thing would be an enormous waste of time.' (The Journal Box) Born 1941. Lives and works in New Plymouth, prolific writer Elizabeth Smither is New Zealand’s Te Mata Poet Laureate. She is also a librarian and a journalist. She has spent much of her life in New Plymouth where she still lives and works. She has two sons and a daughter. She published her first collection, Here Come the Clouds, when she was in her mid-30s and ‘at once established her distinctive, even idiosyncratic, poetic manner. The short poem, usually but not always unrhymed, witty, stylish and intellectually curious, has remained her forte . . . ’ (Oxford Companion to NZ Literature). She has since ‘written some of the best short lyrics ever produced in this country’ (Gregory O’Brien, Listener). Although perhaps best known as a poet, with some 13 collections of poems to her credit, she has also written novels, short stories, children’s books and an autobiography and has edited several books for publication. Her work has also appeared in many periodicals and anthologies. Her Auckland University Press publications include Professor Musgrove’s Canary (poetry; 1986), A Pattern of Marching (poetry; 1989; winner of the New Zealand Book Award for Poetry, 1990), Nights at the Embassy (fiction; 1990), The Tudor Style (poetry; 1993), The Journal Box (autobiography; 1996) and The Lark Quartet (poetry; 1999). She is one of the 12 New Zealand poets reading from their published work on New Zealand’s first poetry anthology on CD, Seeing Voices (AUP), which was released in November 1999. Her latest title from AUP, The Lark Quartet, won the 2000 Montana New Zealand Book Award for poetry. Elizabeth has received widespread recognition for her writing in many awards and distinctions, which include a Writing Bursary (1977), the Freda Buckland Award (1983), an Auckland University Literary Fellowship (1984), a Scholarship in Letters, twice (1987; 1992), a Literary Fund Travelling Bursary (1988) and the Lilian Ida Smith Award (1989). In her ‘spare time’, she likes ‘reading, watching cricket, gardening, travelling and dining out’. Listening to The Goldberg Variations A dream of piano playing: I would rise the gaze downward, the heart raw) Quietly we rose and slipped through the door at which the gentleman seated himself On the polished floor I sat in my evening dress flow into resolution and a method as the white hands with their little hairs accrued. In the distance chairs were held and the gentleman in tails got up and snuffed
© Elizabeth Smither.
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