Two Stunning Books Years in the Making being published next month

Two Stunning Books Years in the Making NZ's Greatest Poet - His Life and His Work   Sailing in a New Direction by Terry Sturm  Auckland University Press Hardback, 240 x 170 mm, 732 pages 29 September 2017, $69.99  A powerful biography of New Zealand’s most important poet. hang on to your hands anything can happen – ‘Two Pedestrians with One Thought’ Allen Curnow (1911–2001) was one of the most eminent poets writing in English in the second half of the twentieth century. From Valley of Decision (1933) to The Bells of Saint Babel’s (2001) he defined and redefined how poetry might discover the possibilities of a world seen afresh.   Through relationships with writers from Dylan Thomas to C. K. Stead he influenced the changing shape of modern poetry. And in criticism and anthologies like the Penguin Book of New Zealand Verse he helped identify the distinctive imaginative preoccupations that made New Zealand’s writing and culture different from elsewhere. By the time of his death at the age of ninety, he had completed a body of work unique in this country and increasingly recognised internationally. This major biography introduces readers to Allen Curnow’s life and work: from a childhood in a Christchurch vicarage, through theological training, journalism and university life, marriages and children, and on to an international career as a writer of poetry, plays, satire and criticism. The book lucidly identifies the shifting textures of Curnow’s writing and unravels the intersections between life and words. The result of over a decade’s research and writing, Simply by Sailing in a New Direction offers deep insight into the development of New Zealand literature and culture.   Allen Curnow Collected Poems Edited by Elizabeth Caffin and Terry Sturm Auckland University Press Hardback, 240 x 170 mm, 388 pages 29 September 2017, $59.99 This is the definitive collection of work by New Zealand’s most distinguished poet. Throughout his lifetime, Allen Curnow revised, selected and collected his poetry in various ways. For the first time this collection brings together all of Curnow’s poetry grouped in their original volumes. The notes reproduce Curnow’s comments on individual poems and include relevant editorial guidance. Allen Curnow (1911–2001) was at the time of his death regarded as one of the greatest of all poets writing in English. For seventy years, from Valley of Decision (1933) to The Bells of Saint Babel’s (2001), Curnow’s poetry was always on the move – from his early approaches to New Zealand identity and myth to later work concerned with the philosophical encounter between word and world.