Allen Curnow

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Thomas Allen Munro Curnow (17 June 1911 to September 2001) was a New Zealand poet and journalist.

Life

Curnow was born in Timaru, New Zealand, the son of a fourth generation New Zealander, an Anglican clergyman, and he grew up in a Catholic family. The family was of Cornish descent. They migrated from Canterbury, Belfast, Malvern, Lyttelton, and New Brighton during his youth, many of whom migrated in Canterbury, Belfast, Malvern, Lyttelton, and New Brighton. He was educated at Christchurch Boys' High School, Canterbury University, and earned a PhD from Auckland University in 1964.

Curnow went from 1929 to 1930 at the Christchurch Sun before returning to Auckland to prepare for the Anglican ministry at St John's Theological College (1931-1933). Curnow's first poems, as well as Kiwi and Phoenix, were released in University periodicals during this period.

Curnow, 1934, returned to South Island, where he began a correspondence with Iris Wilkinson and Alan Mulgan, as well as finding a job at The Press, the Christchurch morning daily newspaper, after deciding against a career in the Anglican ministry. He began a lifelong friendship with Denis Glover and contributed to the Caxton Press, contributing to the publication of some of his poems. He taught English at Auckland University from 1950 to 1976, spending a lot of time at his holiday home on Lone Kauri Road in the central Waitere Ranges. Karekare Beach and the ranges were two of his later work.

Personal life

Curnow's first marriage, to Elizabeth "Betty" Le Cren, was ended in 1965; they had a daughter and two sons, one of whom was New Zealand poet and art critic Wystan Curnow. Jenifer Tole's second marriage was his second. He was buried at Purewa Cemetery in Meadowbank, Auckland's suburb.

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Career

Curnow wrote a long-running weekly satirical poetry column under the pen-name of Whim Wham for The Press from 1937, and then The New Zealand Herald from 1951, finishing in 1988 – a far-reaching period in which he turned his keen wit to many world issues, from Franco, Hitler, Vietnam, Apartheid, and the White Australia policy, to the internal politics of Walter Nash and the eras of Robert Muldoon and David Lange, all interspersed with humorous commentary on New Zealand's obsession with rugby and other light-hearted subjects.

Curnow's publication Book of New Zealand Verse (1945) is seen as a landmark in New Zealand literature. He is, however, more celebrated as poet than as a satirist. His poetic works are heavily influenced by his training for the Anglican ministry, and subsequent rejection of that calling, with Christian imagery, myth and symbolism being included frequently, particularly in his early works (such as 'Valley of Decision'). He draws consistently on his experiences in childhood to shape a number of his poems, reflecting perhaps a childlike engagement with the environment in which he grew up, these poems bringing the hopeful, curious, questioning voice that a childlike view entails. Curnow's work of course is not all so innocently reflective. The satirist in Curnow is certainly not pushed aside in his poetic works, but is explored instead with a greater degree of emotional connectivity and self-reflection.

Curnow's works concerning the New Zealand landscape and the sense of isolation experienced by one who lives in an island colony are perhaps his most moving and most deeply pertinent works regarding the New Zealand condition. His landscape/isolation centered poetry reflects varying degrees of engaged fear, guilt, accusation, rage and possessiveness, creating an important but, both previously and still, much neglected dialogue with the New Zealand landscape. He positions himself as an outside critic (he was far less religiously and politically involved than contemporaries like James K. Baxter, and far more conventional in his lifestyle also) and though perhaps less impassioned in his writing than his contemporaries, his poetic works are both prophetic and intelligent.

Curnow was the subject of the 2001 documentary Early Days Yet, directed by Shirley Horrocks. Filmed in the final months of Curnow's life, it records him talking about his life and work, and visiting the setting of some of his important poems.

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