A01=Gregory O'Brien
Author_Gregory O'Brien
Category=DCF
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Product details
- ISBN 9781857540475
- Weight: 146g
- Dimensions: 160 x 230mm
- Publication Date: 20 Jan 1994
- Publisher: Carcanet Press Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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"Days Beside Water" is an ideal introduction to the poetry of Gregory O'Brien, one of the best younger writers (and artists) of New Zealand. The poems are set where sea, land and sky, past, present and future, meet in different lights and moods. There are lyrics, comic interludes, an imagined account of the marriage of Samuel Marsden, the 19th-century missioner. The theme of spiritual marriage - a union of clements in imaginary or historical contexts - recurs in two sequences: an invented life of the Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi, and "The Milk Horse", about a foundling and the Mother Superior of an orphanage. The poems capture the permanent value in moments and emotions, chiefly love. O'Brien's involvement with the graphic arts and add richness to his imagery.
Born inMatamata, New Zealand , in 1961, Gregory O'Brien has lived in Wellingtonsince 1989, where he is writer, painter and senior curator at City Gallery Wellington. As well as numerous pamphlets, he has published seven collections of poetry, among them Days Beside Water (Carcanet, 1994) and Afternoon of an Evening Train(Victoria University Press, 2005). With Jenny Bornholdt and Mark Williams, he co-edited An Anthology of New Zealand Poetry (In English), which appeared from Oxford University Press in 1997. A collection of his writings about New Zealand art and literature, After Bathing at Baxter's; Essays and Notebooks, was published in 2002. His books about New Zealand visual arts include Lands and Deeds; Profiles of New Zealand Painters(1996), Hotere out the Black Window (1997) and Welcome to the South Seas: Contemporary New Zealand Art for young people(AUP, 2004). His book-length meditation on France, New Zealand, Modernism and sub-aquaticism is titled News of the Swimmer Reaches Shore (Carcanet 2007).
