Pat White – Academy of New Zealand Literature

ANZL Member

About this Member
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Pat at the Fracking & Hawk launch. Photo credit: Glen Innes

Drawing on a varied background, Pat White has crafted an extensive body of poetry and creative nonfiction that reflects his love for the natural environment. Vincent O’Sullivan described Pat’s work as ‘poetry with its eye on “real things” – on work, on weather, on love, on finding the right name for things at the moment they are slipping away … with the everyday presented as the rare privilege it is.’ John Horrocks described Pat’s poems as ‘drawn from a lifetime of immersion in the natural world and its rhythms. Pat White is among the very few New Zealand writers who can speak to this experience.’

Pat has worked as a dairy farmer, teacher, librarian, shepherd, tertiary art lecturer as well as other jobs. A parallel career as a landscape painter has added depth to his sense of place.

His experience as a writer has included running workshops, involvement in the Wairarapa Poems in the Vines festivals, giving readings, and promoting the work of others. He has been a participant in various national festivals and was invited to attend the Watermark Muster, Australia, as the only international guest. Pat has been awarded several residencies. Most recently, he and wife Catherine Day donated proceeds from his book Fracking & Hawk to the creation of a Creative Writing Award for senior students at Mackenzie College, Fairlie.

Pat is working on a life of author Peter Hooper (1919-1991). He is also working on a volume of essays based on the idea of place and our relationship to the natural world, forthcoming in 2017-18.

Links

New Zealand Book Council profile page

Victoria University Press author page

takehē review of Fracking & Hawk (April, 2016)

Landfall review of Fracking & Hawk (April, 2016)

Bibliography: Pat White

Poetry

Fracking & Hawk (Frontiers Press, 2015)

Gnossienne (Wai-te-ata Press, limited edition of images by Catherine Day and poetry by Pat White, French translation by Nadine Ribault. Also hand-printed in twelve boxed sets for exhibition purposes: 2012)

Planting the Olives and Other Essential Acts (Frontiers Press, c/Red Roofs, 2003)

Drought & Other Intimacies (Steele Roberts, 1999)

Dark Backward (Wakelin House, 1994)

Acts of Resistance (Longacres Press, 1985)

Cut Across the Grain (Dunedin City Library, 1980)

Bushfall (Pat White, 1978)

Signposts (Frontiers Press, 1977)

Creative Nonfiction

How the Land Lies: Of Longing and Belonging (Memoir: Victoria UP, 2010)

Being Local: A Sense of Place (Exegesis for MFA: Massey, 2008)

Gallipoli: In Search of a Family Story (Biographical essay & exhibition catalogue: Red Roofs, 2004)

Catching the Moment (Catalogue essay regarding Roy Steer, water colour artist, [Accompanied major exhibition at opening of Aratoi, Wairarapa Museum of Art & History]: 2002)