New Zealand Writers
OLIVER, Stephen
Oliver is a poet who draws on his rich and often remarkable life experience to create what one critic called "a verse diary of the life of the mind".
OLIVER, Stephen (1950 - ) is a poet who has published widely. In addition to being a poet he has at different times in his life been a newsreader, an announcer, a journalist, and a copy and feature writer.
Oliver was born and raised in Wellington. After completing a one-year diploma course in journalism at Wellington Polytechnic he left New Zealand. Before settling in Australia, Oliver lived and worked Greece, Paris, Vienna, London, San Francisco and Israel. He returned to New Zealand in 2007.
Oliver’s first collection of poetry Henwise was published in 1975. He has since completed nine additional volumes including & Interviews (1978), Autumn Songs (1978), Letter to James K. Baxter (1980), Earthbound Mirrors (1984), Guardians, Not Angels (1993), Islands of Wilderness – A Romance (1996), Election Year Blues (1999) Unmanned (1999) and Night of Warehouses: Poems 1978-2000 (2001). In addition to the above collections Oliver’s work has also been widely anthologised in both Australia and New Zealand.
Peter Goldsworthy in the Australian Book Review described poems as having "near perfect balance". John Allison in New Zealand Books describes Oliver’s "writing [as] richly textured, a sensual music. The rhythms are muscular, pointed by a sure sense for lineation. The book is equally rich in images, marvellously evocative".
Updated Information
Two new poetry titles from Stephen Oliver: Deadly Pollen (2003) and Ballads, Satire & Salt - A Book of Diversions, illustrated by Matt Ottley, (Greywacke Press, 2003). The latter is distributed in New Zealand by Titus Books.
Dr. Nicholas Reid, writes on the API Network (Australian Public Intellectual Network) literary site of book reviews, "Stephen Oliver's anthology of 2001, Night of Warehouses: Poems 1978-2000, brought together the work of a poet who combines an astonishing facility for image with a complete assurance of voice, while showing a deep engagement with the poetic tradition . Two new collections, Ballads, Satire & Salt and Deadly Pollen, will do much to extend that reputation."
About Deadly Pollen, Will Roby of Word Riot writes, "Stephen Oliver makes a turn in language in his latest release, Deadly Pollen, a collection of new and recently published poems full of both original and mystical references. Conversation, myth, image, symbol . . . The author says his book 'represents an ongoing exploration of damage to our larger cultural environment' and uses his work to 'pay homage to historical memory.' Oliver calls poetry 'an exercise of loss and preservation.'"
Ballads, Satire & Salt - A Book of Diversions (2003) is a collection of mostly comic, political and nonsense verse. '... lively and technically impressive ... a vigorous addition to our fund of light verse.' JAAM.
Either Side The Horizon is Oliver’s latest collection of poetry, published by Titus Books, 2005.
CD ROM King Hit recording features poems by Stephen Oliver and music by Matt Ottley. IP Digital [Interactive Publications] Brisbane, Australia.
For more informaton go to the IP mini-site.
About Harmonic, Nicholas Reid from Antipodes, write: “Stephen Oliver’s new book, Harmonic, is a tour de force, and I doubt that Australasian letters will see a more important volume of poems in this decade. If his gift in the past has been for the beautifully crafted lyric and the brilliant image, here we have the series of major poems that should cement his reputation, once and for all. ...the volume as a whole has an architectonic, a movement from an early crisis of metaphysics to a final home-coming, in a brilliant series of poems that celebrate the real.”
Harmonic is available in New Zealand, February 2008, through Interactive Publications, Brisbane, Australia. Use the link for further details.
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