New Zealand Poet Laureate emerges from University ranks

Prolific and award-winning author Ian Wedde has been announced as the third New Zealand Poet Laureate.

The senior lecturer from the Department of Art History and English is now the second of the three New Zealand Poet Laureates who are also University of Auckland staff members.

Inaugural New Zealand Poet Laureate Professor Michele Leggott from the Department of English and founding director of the NZ Electronic Poetry Centre says: “Ian Wedde is an excellent speaker, a marvellous performer, a generous poetic colleague and someone who will take seriously the multiple demands of the New Zealand Poet Laureateship.

“His track record as a poet, editor and critic is first-class and getting stronger with each new publication. He is an Arts Foundation Laureate and has won almost every literary award the country can offer. More than this, Ian is deeply committed to promoting poetry as a site for transcultural exchange and experimentation with the visual arts. He likes drawing together writers and artists, authors and audiences, looking always for the unexpected cross-overs, the points where one kind of art or writing finds its way into another set of eyes or ears.”

Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Professor Jan Crosthwaite says: “I am delighted that Ian Wedde’s long-standing commitment to poetry, and the excellence of his poetic imagination, have been recognised in this way. The Faculty of Arts is very proud to host a second Poet Laureate, Professor Michele Leggott of the Department of English having been the first Poet Laureate for New Zealand. We congratulate him on his appointment, knowing that he will be a great poet laureate and will bring further honour to the tokotoko he will now carry.”

Ian Wedde is a foundation poet of NZ Electronic Poetry Centre (www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz) and a prolific author of poetry, fiction and art history. From 1966 his poems have been appearing in literary journals and magazines, and he has now published some 14 collections of poems, including the sell-out The Commonplace Odes (AUP, 2002). He won the 1977 Book Award for Fiction for his first novel, Dick Seddon’s Great Dive, and the 1978 New Zealand Book Award for Poetry for Spells for Coming Out (Auckland University Press). Ralph Hotere: Black Light, of which he was the general editor, won the Illustrative Arts section of the 2001 Montana NZ Book Awards.