Tim Upperton is a poet, reviewer, teacher and blogger who has published three poetry collections. His first book, A House on Fire, was published by Steele Roberts in 2009. His second poetry collection, The Night We Ate The Baby, was an Ockham New Zealand Book Awards finalist in 2016. In his third poetry collection A Riderless Horse (AUP, 2022) Tim stands in the everyday and then runs with it with poems of acid wit, intimations of loss and unexpected resolution.

Tim won the Bronwyn Tate Memorial International Poetry Competition in 2011, and Caselberg International Poetry Competition in 2012, 2013 and again in 2020. His poems have been published in many magazines including Agni, Poetry, Shenandoah, Sport, Takahe, and Landfall, and are anthologised in The Best of Best New Zealand Poems (2011), Villanelles (2012), Essential New Zealand Poems (2014), Obsession: Sestinas in the Twenty-First Century (2014), and Bonsai (2018). He also regularly writes book reviews for New Zealand newspapers including the Dominion, the Listener, and Landfall. Tim is a former poetry editor for Bravado, and judged its poetry competition in 2008. He tutors poetry, fiction and travel writing in the School of English and Media Studies at Massey University, Palmerston North campus.

 

Links

Auckland University Press A Riderless Horse

Haunui Press The Night We Ate The Baby

The Guardian interview discussing Tim’s poem ‘The Truth About Palmerston North’ chosen by actor Sam Neil (Feb, 2021)

Spinoff  The Friday Poem: ‘My childhood’  (Feb, 2021)

NZ Poetry Shelf audio spot: Tim reads ‘So Far We Went’ (July, 2020)

NZ Poetry Foundation: Tim reads ‘The truth about Palmerston North‘ (Feb, 2018)