Allen Curnow

Allen Curnow (born June 17, 1911, Timaru, New Zealand—died September 23, 2001, Auckland) was one of the major modern poets of New Zealand.

The son of an Anglican clergyman, Curnow briefly attended Canterbury College before simultaneously studying theology at the College of St. John the Evangelist in Auckland and attending Auckland University College of the University of New Zealand (later University of Auckland). During that time he began publishing poetry in student journals. In 1933 his first book of poems, Valley of Decision, was issued by Auckland University College’s Student’s Association Press. Though Curnow sat for theological examinations that year, in 1934 he decided against ordination. He published Three Poems in 1935.

During the 1930s and ’40s Curnow worked as a journalist in Christchurch, New Zealand, and briefly (1949) in London. In 1935 he began reporting for the Christchurch The Press, and two years later he started writing light satirical verse for the paper (under the pseudonym Whim Wham). His Whim Wham pieces later appeared in The New Zealand Herald as well. He taught English at the University of Auckland from 1951 to 1976, and he earned a doctorate in literature there in 1966.

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Some of Curnow’s early poems were inspired by a personal religious crisis that took place during his studies for the ministry. Other early poems tend toward political or social satire. As his work matured, Curnow’s verse centred more on New Zealand, especially on its history. He sought the broader significance and universal metaphor in both personal and historical events and attempted to articulate a national literary character. Notable collections from this period include Enemies: Poems 1934–36 (1937), Not in Narrow Seas (1939), Island & Time (1941), and Sailing or Drowning (1943). Curnow edited the widely read A Book of New Zealand Verse 1923–45 (1945; rev. ed., 1951), a collection of writing by New Zealanders in which he identified a number of distinctive national themes as New Zealand progressed beyond a strictly colonial identity; it was the first serious study of New Zealand poetry.

More-personal verse was interspersed in the poems collected in Jack Without Magic (1946), At Dead Low Water and Sonnets (1949), and Poems 1949–1957 (1957). Curnow also edited The Penguin Book of New Zealand Verse (1960). His selections for that volume came under fire from younger poets—such as James K. Baxter, Alistair Campbell, and Louis Johnson—who objected to what they perceived as a dated and attenuated nationalistic emphasis. Curnow’s later collections include A Small Room with Large Windows (1962), Trees, Effigies, Moving Objects (1972), You Will Know When You Get There: Poems 1979–81 (1982), Selected Poems, 1940–1989 (1990), and The Bells of St. Babel’s (2001). The verse that he wrote as Whim Wham was collected in, among other volumes, Whim Wham’s New Zealand: The Best of Whim Wham 1937–1988 (2005). Curnow also wrote a number of plays.

In 1986 Curnow was made Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), and in 1989 he received the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry. He was appointed to the Order of New Zealand in 1990.