Charles Edgar Spear, 1910–1985
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26686/knznq.v7i3.715Abstract
Charles Spear’s life and work represent something of a contradiction. A poet whose work has been described as ‘owing none of its themes to New Zealand’ continues to be anthologised – and praised – by New Zealand poets to this day. This is all the more remarkable for a poet whose published work runs to little more than a single book (Twopence Coloured) of fifty-two ‘exquisite cameo lyrics’ of no more than seventeen lines in length. But perhaps the most striking contradiction is that between a body of work which ‘travels widely in time and space’ and a poet who said of his own life – not without justification – that ‘practically nothing has ever happened to me’.
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References
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