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Wednesday, 6 July 2016

The Smoking Typewriter


My good friend, the New Zealand historian Ron Palenski, sent me this poem, which appeared in The Otago Daily Times in Dunedin last Saturday.
David Eggleton (above, born 1952) is a leading New Zealand poet and writer. Born in Auckland of Rotuman, Tongan and Pakeha (Māori for European) ancestry, he was raised in Auckland and Fiji and dropped out of school to take up performance music and poetry. Eggleton later moved to Dunedin, where he has been based since the 1980s. Eggleton's creative output has been diverse, including mixed media recordings involving poetry and music, several volumes of poetry, histories of New Zealand music and photography, and a large number of literary reviews. He is also an established art critic. He has been editor of New Zealand's premier literary journal, Landfall, since 2010. Eggleton was awarded the London Time Out magazine's Street Poet of the Year in 1985 and the 2015 Janet Frame Literary Trust Award for Poetry. His poems are frequently iconoclastic or anti-establishment.
The great New Zealand author Janet Frame herself owned a number of typewriters, including a Brother, an Olympia Splendid she gave to an aspiring writer, and an Imperial Good Companion:
But back to the Smoking Typewriter:
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1 comment:

  1. Bill M6 July 2016 at 21:26

    Love the poem.
    The first photo reminded me of the many smokey broadcast newsrooms in the radio stations where I worked. Lots of smoke, clutter, and typewriters.

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