C. K. Stead

Template:Short description Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox academic Christian Karlson "Karl" Stead Template:Post-nominals (born 17 October 1932) is a New Zealand writer whose works include novels, poetry, short stories, and literary criticism.<ref name="ABC interview">Template:Cite news</ref> He is one of New Zealand's most well-known and internationally celebrated writers.<ref name="Poetry Archive">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Early life and educationEdit

Stead was born in Auckland, New Zealand, in 1932. He attended Mount Albert Grammar School.<ref name="Read NZ">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> He has said that growing up he rarely read New Zealand writers: "I read a few New Zealand writers at school but mainly it was a British education so one read British writers really".<ref name="ABC interview" /> Stead began writing poetry at about age 14 when he read a copy of the collected works of Rupert Brooke, sent by his sister's penpal in England.<ref name="ABC interview" />

Stead graduated from the University of Auckland with a Bachelor of Arts in 1954, and earned his Masters of Arts the following year.<ref name="Britannica">Template:Britannica</ref> At this time he and his wife were neighbours with short-story writer Frank Sargeson. Writer Janet Frame was living in a hut in Sargeson's garden, having recently been discharged after nine years in a mental hospital. Frame later wrote about this time in her memoir An Angel at My Table, and Stead covered the same period in his autobiographical novel All Visitors Ashore (1984).<ref name="Wroe">Template:Cite news</ref>

Academic and literary careerEdit

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Stead (left) at the 1981 protest against Springboks in Hamilton

Stead completed his PhD at the University of Bristol in 1961.<ref name="Britannica"/> From 1959 to 1986, Stead taught at the University of Auckland, becoming the Professor of English in 1968.<ref name="Britannica" /> In 1964, Stead published his first book, The New Poetic (1964), based on his PhD study of W. B. Yeats, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot and the Georgian poets. It went on to sell over 100,000 copies.<ref name="Wroe" /> His first book of poems, Whether the Will Is Free: Poems 1954–62, was published in the same year.<ref name="Britannica" />

Stead's first novel, Smith's Dream, about a war similar to the Vietnam War in New Zealand, was published in 1971.<ref name="Wroe" /> Stead was an opponent of the Vietnam War.<ref name="Wroe" /> Smith's Dream provided the basis for the film Sleeping Dogs, starring Sam Neill, which became the first New Zealand film released in the United States.

In the 1980s, Stead's writings about Māori rights and feminism became the subject of some criticism.<ref name="Wroe" /> For example, in an article published in the London Review of Books in December 1986, he wrote that the representation of New Zealand history by Witi Ihimaera in his novel The Matriarch (1986) was inaccurate "insofar as it ascribes conscious and malicious intent to the Pakeha and unwillingness to the Maori", and was highly critical of the novel.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> In consequence his editorship of the Faber Book of Contemporary South Pacific Stories was boycotted by some writers, including Keri Hulme, although Stead denied accusations of racism or being anti-Māori.<ref name="Mitenkova">Template:Cite journal</ref> Stead was active in protests against the 1981 protest against Springboks and was part of the crowd that occupied the field at a game in Hamilton causing its cancellation.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Stead retired from his position as the Professor of English at the University of Auckland in 1986 to write full time, after the success of his novel All Visitors Ashore (1984).<ref name="OCNZL">Template:Cite encyclopedia</ref> In the following two decades he wrote a string of internationally successful novels, and twice won the fiction section of the New Zealand Book Awards with All Visitors Ashore and The Singing Whakapapa (1994).<ref name="OCNZL" /> Stead's historical novel Mansfield: A Novel, based on the life of the writer Katherine Mansfield, was a finalist for the 2005 Tasmania Pacific Fiction Prize and received commendation in the 2005 Commonwealth Writers Prize for the South East Asia and South Pacific region.<ref name="Scoop 2005">Template:Cite news</ref>

Stead has continued to write and receive international accolades well into his seventies and eighties. In 2010 he won the inaugural Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award for his short story "Last Season's Man".<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The short story was subject to some controversy, with literary commentator Fergus Barrowman suggesting that it appeared to be a "revenge fantasy" about Stead's rivalry with younger writer Nigel Cox, who had criticised Stead in a 1994 essay.<ref name="Hubbard">Template:Cite news</ref> The story was reported on by UK satirical magazine Private Eye.<ref name="Barbs">Template:Cite news</ref> Stead in response has said that the story was a work of fiction.<ref name="Dudding">Template:Cite news</ref>

Stead was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire, for services to New Zealand literature, in the 1985 New Year Honours,<ref name="1985 Hons">Template:London Gazette</ref> and was admitted into the highest civilian honour New Zealand can bestow, the Order of New Zealand in the 2007 Special Honours.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

In August 2015, Stead was named the New Zealand Poet Laureate for 2015 to 2017.<ref name=nzpl>Template:Cite news</ref> To celebrate the conclusion of Stead's term as Poet Laureate,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> the Alexander Turnbull Library published a signed, limited edition book of his work called In the Mirror, and Dancing. The little volume of poems was hand-pressed by Brendan O'Brien and illustrated with line sketches by New Zealand expatriate artist Douglas MacDiarmid.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The book was launched on 8 August 2017 in Wellington, with the assistance of Gregory O'Brien.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Personal lifeEdit

Stead and his wife Kay have three children.<ref name="Dudding" /> His daughter Charlotte Grimshaw is a well-known New Zealand writer.

List of awards and honoursEdit

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1955 Poetry Awards Incorporated prize (U.S.A.)<ref name="Poetry Archive" />
1960 Landfall Readers' Award<ref name="Poetry Archive" />
1972 Katherine Mansfield Short Story award<ref name="ANZ Literature">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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1972 Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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1984 Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to New Zealand literature<ref name="1985 Hons"/>
1990 Queen's Medal<ref name="ANZ Literature" />
1995 Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature<ref name="Book Council profile" />
2005 Creative New Zealand Michael King Fellowship<ref name="Scoop 2005" />
2001 Honorary DLitt from the University of Bristol<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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2007 Member of the Order of New Zealand<ref name="Book Council profile">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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2009 Montana Prize (for Collected Poems 1951–2006)<ref name="NZ Poet Laureate profile">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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2009 Prime Minister's Awards for Literary Achievement<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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2010 Sunday Times Short Story Award (UK) (for "Last Season's Man")<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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2011 Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement<ref name="NZ Poet Laureate profile" />
2014 Sarah Broom Poetry Prize<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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New Zealand Book AwardsEdit

1976 Quesada (Poetry)
1985 All Visitors Ashore (Fiction, shared with Marilyn Duckworth)
1995 The Singing Whakapapa (Fiction)

Selected worksEdit

Whether the Will is Free: Poems 1954–62 (1964)
The New Poetic (1964)
Smith's Dream (1971)
Crossing the Bar (1972)
Quesada: Poems 1972–74 (1975)
Measure for Measure (1977, editor)
Walking Westward (1979)
Five for the Symbol (1981)
Geographies (1982)
In the Glass Case: Essays on New Zealand literature (1982)
Poems of a Decade (1983)
Paris: A poem (1984)
All Visitors Ashore (1984)
The Death of the Body (1986)
Pound, Yeats, Eliot and the Modernist Movement (1986)
Between (1988)
Sister Hollywood (1989)
Answering to the Language: Essays on modern writers (1989)
Voices (1990)
The End of the Century at the End of the World (1992)
The Singing Whakapapa (1994)
Villa Vittoria (1997)
Straw into Gold: New and selected poems (1997)
The Blind Blonde with Candles in Her Hair (1998)
Talking About O'Dwyer (1999)
The Right Thing (2000)
The Writer at Work: Essays (2000)
The Secret History of Modernism (2001)
Dog (2002)
Kin of Place: Essays on 20 New Zealand writers (2002)
Mansfield: a novel (2004)
My Name Was Judas (2006)
The Black River (2007)
Book Self: Essays (2008)
South West of Eden (A Memoir, 1932–1956, 2009)
Ischaemia (winning poem of the 2010 International Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine)<ref>Template:Cite journal;</ref><ref>Hulse M, Singer D, eds. The Hippocrates Prize 2010. The winning and commended poems. The Hippocrates Prize in association with Top Edge Press, 2010. Template:ISBN.</ref>
Risk (2012)
In the Mirror, and Dancing (2017)
The Necessary Angel (2018)
You Have A Lot to Lose: A Memoir 1956–1986 (2020)
What You Made of It: A Memoir 1987–2010 (2021)