David Eggleton who is of Rotuman, Tongan and Palagi ancestry, grew up in Fiji and South Auckland and now lives in Dunedin, New Zealand/Aotearoa. He is a poet, art critic, writer, editor and freelance journalist and was Editor of Landfall, New Zealand’s pre-eminent journal of arts and letters and Landfall Review Online as well as the Phantom Billstickers Cafe Reader. He is currently the Reviews Editor for Landfall. His creative work investigates ideas of contemporary popular culture versus ‘highbrow’, blending the literary and vernacular with energy and vigour. In 2016 his collection, The Conch Trumpet (Otago University Press, 2015) won the poetry category at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards and he also received the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement. His collection Respirator is a sumptuous celebration of David Eggleton’s tenure as the nation’s poet-at-large during his time as Aotearoa NZ Poet Laureate (2019–22).

David has had multiple books of poems and a book of short fiction published, as well as a number of works of non-fiction. His first collection of poems was co-winner of the PEN New Zealand Best First Book of Poems Award (1987). He was awarded the Robert Burns Fellowship (1990), won a substantial Copyright Licensing Ltd (CLL) Writers’ Award (2004), was a finalist in the lifestyle and contemporary culture category at the Montana New Zealand Book Awards (2004) and received the Fulbright-Creative New Zealand Pacific Writers’ Residency (2017). His poetry and short stories appear in a wide range of recent anthologies.

Well-known as a performance poet, David has released several poetry recordings featuring his collaborations with musicians and been involved in poetry text collaborations with practitioners of a variety of other art forms, from sculpture to fashion design. In addition, he has produced short films and documentaries. He is also a six-time winner of the Montana Reviewer of the Year.

In 2024 David (along with Vaughan Rapatahana and Mere Taito) edited Katūīvei: Contemporary Pasifika Poetry from Aotearoa New Zealand, a collection of 137 poems by 89 Aotearoa-based Pacific poets which explores the navigation between our cultural spaces. This significant collection ranges from long-established voices such as Albert Wendt, Selina Tusitala Marsh and David Eggleton and the powerful newer voices of poets such as Tusiata Avia, Courtney Sina Meredith, Karlo Mila and Grace Iwashita-Taylor to new and emerging voices.

David’s most recent poetry collection, Lifting the Island (Red Hen Press, 2025), is a kind of lyrical word map of the South Pacific, built up through a lush epic catalog of flora, fauna, and artifacts. Linguistically agile, this book’s stanzas bring together the lyrical and the slangy, celebrating the local vernaculars of New Zealand, Australia, and Polynesia.

 

Links

Read NZ Te Pou Muramura writer page

Otago University Press author page

NZ Electronic Poetry Centre poet page

Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand: New Zealand Poetry: Diversity Since 1985: David Eggleton

The Poetry Archive poet page

ANZRB review of Respirator (April, 2023)

ANZL review of The Wilder Years: Selected Poems (Feb, 2022)

Editor at Landfall Review Online, University of Otago, Dunedin

Cultural Icons video interview conducted by Graeme Lay (Aug, 2016)

Jacket2 article about South Island poets (Sept, 2015)

NZ Poetry Shelf interview (March, 2015)

NZ Poetry Shelf review of The Conch Trumpet (Jan, 2015)

Poetry from Aotearoa New Zealand on Best American Poetry website (Aug, 2014)

Oamaru Public Library poetry reading review (Aug, 2015)