Literary

 

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Stephen was part of the New Zealand literary renaissance of the late 1960s and early 1970s. As a publisher he set new standards of design, and his production of David Mitchell’s Pipe Dreams in Ponsonby (1972) and Ian Wedde’s Made Over (1974) are still regarded as high points in New Zealand’s literary history. Pipe Dreams was runnerup to Chinua Achebe’s work in the inaugural Commonwealth Poetry Prize.

His own writing of the period has been anthologised in the defining collection edited by Alan Brunton, Murray Edmond and Michelle Leggott, Big Smoke: New Zealand Poems 1960-1975 (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2000) and in Elsie Locke’s history of the New Zealand anti-war movement, Peace People (Christchurch: Hazard Press, 1992). Altogether, Stephen published five volumes of his own poetry, the last two in North America. Fittingly for his interest in book design, his Songs of the Maori King (Victoria, British Columbia: Sono Nis, 1986) won the Canadian Alcuin Prize for book design.

Stephen has begun to publish his back catalogue of novels. The first, from Nth Position Publishers with distribution by faber & faber, is The White Door. The second, shortly forthcoming, is entitled Joseph Kony and the Titans of Zagreb, from the same publishers.

 

Arden's Summer