Allen Curnow (ed.). A Book of New Zealand Verse, 1923–45. Christchurch: The Caxton Press, 1945.
Allen Curnow (ed.). A Book of New Zealand Verse, 1923–45. Christchurch: The Caxton Press, 1945.
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Case 21
Recent Poems: Allen Curnow, A. R. D. Fairburn, Denis Glover, R. A. K. Mason. Christchurch: The Caxton Press, 1941.
Recent Poems was the last in a sequence of early poetry anthologies, following four years after the Caxton Miscellany. The volume was effectively ‘an adjunct to the volumes by individual poets that increasingly became Caxton’s focus’ (Jones 44). In his review, David Hall praised specific poems as works with a ‘wholly New Zealand voice [that] make us creatively aware that being a New Zealander has in 1941 reality and meaning’ as opposite to earlier New Zealand writers who, according to G. R. Gilbert, ‘wrote like tourists, as though they had no roots’ (222).
Lawrence Jones. The Making of a New Zealand Literary Culture 1932 – 1945 (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2003)
Recent Poems: Allen Curnow, A. R. D. Fairburn, Denis Glover, R. A. K. Mason. Christchurch: The Caxton Press, 1941.
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Mark Williams (ed.). The Caxton Press Anthology: New Zealand Poetry 1972–1986. Christchurch: The Caxton Press, 1987.
This anthology was published to celebrate The Caxton Press’s fiftieth anniversary. By the 1980s, Caxton, according to Noel Waite, had taken on the status of an elder statesman, and this publication offered ‘a mature survey ... of the lively and heterogeneous literary scene of the period’ (14).
Noel Waite. Adventure and Art: The Caxton Press (Wellington: National Library of New Zealand, 1998)
Mark Williams (ed.). The Caxton Press Anthology: New Zealand Poetry 1972–1986. Christchurch: The Caxton Press, 1987.
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