|
|
 |
IAN WEDDE
2006 Laureate
Poet/Writer
Ian Wedde is a poet, fiction writer, critic and art curator.
Born in Blenheim in 1946, he spent the early part of his life living in East Pakistan and England. On returning to New Zealand he attended King's College, Auckland, going on to The University of Auckland, where he gained a MA in English. From 1966 his poems began appearing regularly in journals, including Landfall and Freed. To date, Ian has published 12 collections of poems, four novels, and a collection of short stories, while his prolific essays in art criticism and cultural studies have been collected in How to be nowhere: essays and texts, 1971-1994 and Making Ends Meet:Essays and Talks 1992-2004.
Ian edited The Penguin Book of New Zealand Verse (1985, with Harvey McQueen) and The Penguin Book of Contemporary New Zealand Poetry (1989, with Harvey McQueen and Miriama Evans). He was the General Editor of Ralph Hotere: Black Light, which won the Illustrative Arts section of the 2001 Montana Book Awards, curated and edited Fomison, What Shall We Tell Them? (1994) and Now See Hear! Art, Language and Translation (1990, with Gregory Burke). Ian won the 1977 Book Award for Fiction for his first novel, Dick Seddon's Great Dive and shared the 1978 NZ Book Award for Poetry for Spells for Coming Out. He was the Burns Fellow in 1972 and his writing has been further recognised by the Writers' Bursary 1974, the Scholarship in Letters 1980, 1989 and the Victoria University writing fellowship 1984, among other awards. He was a member of the Literary Fund Advisory Committee 1977-79 and of the Queen Elizabeth II Visual Arts Panel in 1990. From 1994 to 2004, Ian was head of art and visual culture at Te Papa. In 2005 he was awarded the Meridian Energy Katherine Mansfield Memorial Fellowship and in the same year published his latest poetry collection Three Regrets and a Hymn to Beauty and Making Ends Meet:Essays and Talks 1992-2004. In 2006 he was awarded a Fulbright Travel award and published his most recent novel, The Viewing Platform. In February 2007 Ian Wedde was named among the University of Auckland’s 2007 Distinguished Alumni. Ian has resumed writing Chinese Opera, a novel he started twenty years ago and then put aside, only to take up recently when he discovered a way back into it. Chinese Opera will be published in late 2008.
Ian is currently writing a book about the artist Bill Culbert which will be published in 2009, and a new book of poems is scheduled for publication.
Ian lives in Wellington with his partner Donna Malane, a television writer and producer.
|
|
