Charles Brasch Journals 1945–1957

NEW TITLE Selected and introduced by PETER SIMPSON INFORMATION

OTAGO KEY POINTS UNIVERSITY • Volume 2 of 3 PRESS • Includes the start of • Fascinating, moving, revealing

Published with the assistance of Creative New Zealand

PUBLICATION DETAILS This volume of Charles Brasch’s journals covers the years from late 1945 to the end of 1957, Charles Brasch Journals 1945–1957 when the poet and editor was aged 36 to 48. It begins with his return to New Zealand after Selected and introduced by World War II to establish a literary quarterly to be published by the Caxton Press. The Peter Simpson journals cover the first decade or so of his distinguished editorship ofLandfall , a role that brought Brasch into contact with New Zealand’s leading artists and intelligentsia. Otago University Press His frank and often detailed descriptions of these people – including , www.otago.ac.nz/press A.R.D. Fairburn, Keith Sinclair, Eric McCormick, James Bertram, J.C. Beaglehole, Maria Biography/NZ Literature Dronke, Fred and , Alistair Campbell, Bill Oliver, Toss and Edith Woollaston, Hardback, 245 x 170mm, 660 pp , , , Lawrence Baigent, , Colin ISBN: 978-1-927322-28-4, $59.95 McCahon, James K. Baxter, , and many others – are among the highlights of the book. Unmarried and longing for intimacy, Brasch also writes with great candour about his IN-STORE: MAY 2017 relationships with Rose Archdall, Rodney Kennedy and Harry Scott, revealing a side of See below for ordering information himself that has not been known about before. Central to Brasch’s life was the vocation of poetry. He writes movingly about his own work, and also about his love of nature and the outdoors, including lively descriptions of walking the Milford and Routeburn tracks. The book ends with his visit to Europe in 1957, which confirmed his sense that New Zealand had become for him ‘a centre & a world’. A lengthy introduction by Peter Simpson and other editorial apparatus guide the reader through this engrossing material.

EDITOR Peter Simpson is a writer, editor and curator who has taught at universities in New Zealand and Canada. He was director of the Holloway Press and a head of English at the University of Auckland, retiring in 2013. Peter has written and edited many books and essays on New Zealand art, literature and cultural history, including titles on Ronald Hugh Morrieson, Allen Curnow, Colin McCahon, Kendrick Smithyman and Leo Bensemann. Recent projects include Bloomsbury South: The arts in Christchurch 1933–53 (AUP, 2016), and Leo Bensemann & Friends: Portraiture & The Group (2016), an exhibition curated for the New Zealand Portrait Gallery. He lives in Auckland.

Order all Otago books from Nationwide Book Distributors/ www.nationwidebooks.co.nz/ [email protected]/ Ph: 03 312 1603/ Fax: 03 312 1604