Collected Poems 1951-2006

REFERENCE & ANTHOLOGY CATEGORY WINNER 2009

Collected Poems 1951-2006 - C.K. Stead

Auckland University Press, ISBN 978-1-86940-418-5, $59.99 hbk

C K Stead is our most distinguished living poet. Since the early 1950s, he has experimented with many forms, always bringing to his poetry a strong personality, deft craftsmanship and a commitment to the real. Collected Poems brings together Stead’s poetic achievements for the first time. Compiled and annotated by the author, it illustrates the range and ambition of Stead’s verse over more than 50 years.

C K Stead, ONZ, CBE, is a towering figure in New Zealand literature with a well-deserved international reputation. He is a novelist, poet, critic, essayist, teacher, controversialist and the author and editor of many books.

Christian Karlson (Karl) Stead was born in Auckland, New Zealand, in 1932. He divides his time between Auckland and, for some months each year, living and writing overseas, principally in Europe. Stead has been a prominent figure since the 1950s when, an aspiring poet, he became a protégé of writers Frank Sargeson and Allen Curnow.

His first book of literary criticism, The New Poetic, Yeats to Eliot, was published in 1964 and has been reprinted many times, selling more than 100,000 copies. He has now produced more than 13 novels, 2 books of short stories, 6 of literary criticism, 14 collections of poems and has been included in several poetry anthologies on CD.