C.K. Stead

C.K. Stead (born October 17, 1932, Auckland, New Zealand) is a New Zealand poet and novelist who gained an international reputation as a critic with The New Poetic: Yeats to Eliot (1964), which became a standard work on Modernist poetry.

Stead studied at the University of Auckland (B.A., 1954; M.A., 1955) and the University of Bristol, England (Ph.D., 1961). From 1959 to 1986 he taught at the University of Auckland, becoming a full professor in 1968. His first book of poetry, Whether the Will Is Free: Poems 1954–62, was published in 1964. In his second collection, Crossing the Bar (1972), he was moved by the Vietnam War to protest against the inhumanity and irresponsibility of people in power. His later poetry collections include Quesada: Poems 1972–1974 (1975), Paris (1984), Between (1988), Voices (1990), Straw into Gold: Poems New and Selected (1997), The Right Thing (2000), and The Red Tram (2004). Stead composed the poems in The Black River (2007) after suffering a stroke. The Yellow Buoy: Poems 2007–2012 (2013) deals largely with his European travels.

Stead’s first novel, Smith’s Dream (1971), is a disturbing fantasy set in a fascist New Zealand of the future; it was the basis of a 1977 film, Sleeping Dogs. Other novels include All Visitors Ashore (1984), The Death of the Body (1986), Sister Hollywood (1989), The End of the Century at the End of the World (1992), Villa Vittoria (1997), and Talking About O’Dwyer (1999). The historical novels Mansfield, with writer Katherine Mansfield as its subject, and My Name Was Judas were published in 2004 and 2006, respectively. In 2012 he issued Risk, set during the global financial crisis. The Necessary Angel (2017) follows academics in Paris. Stead reminisced about his own early life in South-West of Eden: A Memoir, 1932–1956 (2010). His next autobiography, You Have a Lot to Lose (2020), covered events from 1956 to 1986.

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Among Stead’s critical works, in addition to The New Poetic, are In the Glass Case: Essays on New Zealand Literature (1981), Answering to the Language (1989), and Kin of Place: Essays on 20 New Zealand Writers (2002).

Stead was created Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1985 and became a member of the Royal Society of Literature in 1995. He received the Order of New Zealand in 2007, and from 2015 to 2017 he served as poet laureate of New Zealand.