1. William Manhire was born on 27 December 1946 and is a New Zealand poet, short story writer, emeritus professor, and New Zealand's inaugural Poet Laureate.
21 Facts About Bill Manhire
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Bill Manhire founded New Zealand's first creative writing course at Victoria University of Wellington in 1975, founded the International Institute of Modern Letters in 2001, and has been a strong promoter of New Zealand literature and poetry throughout his career.
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Bill Manhire has received many notable awards including a Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement in 2007 and an Arts Foundation Icon Award in 2018.
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The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature states that he is "recognised as among the two or three finest New Zealand poets of his generation", and literary critic Peter Simpson has observed that Bill Manhire has "probably done more to widen the audience for poetry in New Zealand than any other individual".
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Bill Manhire's mother was from Scotland with a degree in science, and his father was a publican; they had met and married during World War II, and his mother sailed to New Zealand on a ship of war brides on Valentine's Day in 1946.
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Bill Manhire said he was "enormously encouraged" by Brasch's response, which encouraged him to keep trying and to take himself seriously as a writer.
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Bill Manhire's first book was a poem, Malady, published in 1970.
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Bill Manhire's second book, The Elaboration, was a collaboration with Hotere, and was published by Charles Brasch and Janet Paul.
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In 1973, after returning to New Zealand, Bill Manhire began lecturing in the English department of Victoria University of Wellington, where he founded New Zealand's first creative writing course in 1975.
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Bill Manhire's creative writing course, which he taught for more than 25 years, had a major influence on New Zealand literature, with many well-known New Zealand writers having graduated, including Elizabeth Knox, Barbara Anderson and Jenny Bornholdt.
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Bill Manhire has published a number of poetry collections, including notably his Collected Poems.
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Bill Manhire's poetry is known for word-play, experimentation and his ironic and whimsical sense of humour.
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Critic Iain Sharp writes that Bill Manhire's reputation "rests on a solid, seriously intentioned body of work, notable for its oblique lyricism and sense of wonder at the strangeness of both life and language".
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In 1998, Bill Manhire went to Antarctica for several weeks with poet Chris Orsman and painter Nigel Brown, as part of the Artists to Antarctica programme run by Antarctica New Zealand.
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Bill Manhire was a founding publisher of the online Best New Zealand Poems series, which began in 2000.
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Bill Manhire has regularly worked collaboratively with other artists and creators during his career, including with the artist Ralph Hotere, physicist Paul Callaghan, composer Norman Meehan and singer Hannah Griffin.
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Bill Manhire has received a number of New Zealand's most prestigious literary awards and fellowships, including the Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship in 2004, an Arts Foundation Laureate Award in 2004 and the Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement in 2007.
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Bill Manhire received the Lilian Ida Smith Award in 1987 for fiction and in 1989 for poetry.
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Bill Manhire was appointed the first New Zealand Poet Laureate in 1996, and from January to May 1999 was the Fulbright visiting professor in New Zealand studies at Georgetown University.
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Bill Manhire's work has won the Poetry Prize at the New Zealand Book Awards six times:.
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Bill Manhire is married to journalist Marion McLeod, and has two children, Vanessa and Toby, who are both journalists and writers.