Staff Members

Dr Ken Arvidson

Role: Research Associate Qualifications: MA Auckland HonD (Waik) Email: arvidson@waikato.ac.nz Location: I3.28 Contact:

Research Interests:

Since 1964 Ken Arvidson has taught at Auckland University, Flinders University of South Australia, Adelaide University, University of the South Pacific, and Waikato University. He has been at Waikato since 1974. He became Associate Professor of English, and was Chairman of the English Department 1985-1989 and 1993-1995. Now retired from teaching, he is a Research Associate in English. His academic interests are the Victorian period, the Modern Movement; and Australian, New Zealand, and South Pacific literatures. His early poetry is contained in Riding the Pendulum: Poems 1961-1969, Oxford U. Press, 1973. Poems in that volume and later works have appeared in most of the New Zealand and Australian literary journals, and many have been anthologised in New Zealand, Australia, Great Britain, the U.S.A., and Japan. His critical writings have been similarly widely distributed.

Selected Publications:

Books:

The Maori King, by John Gorst: edited with an Introduction, Reed (NZ) Ltd., Auckland, 2001.

The Poetry of Lauris Edmond: a new selection, with an Introduction, Bridget Williams Books, Wellington 2001.

Poetry:

Poetry has appeared in the following anthologies:

Essential New Zealand Poems, selected by Lauris Edmond and Bill Sewell, Godwit Books, Random House, Auckland, 2001.

New Zealand Love Poems, ed. Lauris Edmond, Auckland Oxford U. Press, 2000.

How You Doing: A Selection of NZ Comic and Satiric Verse, eds. Harry Ricketts and Hugh Roberts, Lincoln U.P. and Daphne Brasell Associates, 1997

The Oxford Book of New Zealand Poetry in English, eds. Jenny Bornholdt, Gregory O'Brien, and Mark Williams, Oxford University Press, 1996.

New Zealand Short Stories and Poems, ed. Sokushin Ezawa, Asahi Press, Tottori, Japan.

Penguin Book of New Zealand Poetry, eds. Ian Wedde and Harvey McQueen, Penguin Books, 1985.

New Zealand Writing Since 1945, eds. MacD. P. Jackson and Vincent O'Sullivan, Oxford University Press, 1983.

New Zealand Love Poems, ed. James Bertram, John McIndoe, 1977.

Only Connect, eds. G. Amirthanayagam and S.C. Harrex, Honolulu and Adelaide, CRNLE and East-West Centre, 1981

Anthology of Twentieth Century New Zealand Poetry, ed. Vincent O'Sullivan, Oxford University Press, 1970. (1976, 1979, 1984.)

Young Commonwealth Poets ed. P.L. Brent, Heinemann, London, 1965.

Selected chapters in books:

“Katherine Mansfield and a Way of Seeing”, Katherine Mansfield: Stories and Pictures, ed. Sarah Shieff and Ralph Crane, U. Waikato English Department Occasional Papers 2003, pp. 7-14.

The Poetry of Lauris Edmond: Introduction and commentary; Auckland U.P. CD., February 2000.


Obituary Lauris Edmond (1924-2000), New Zealand Books Volume 10 Number 1 (Issue 42) March 2000, p. 23.


"Lauris Edmond's Wisdom Poetry", New Zealand Books.....reprinted in Under Review: A Selection from New Zealand Books 1991-1996, eds. Harry Ricketts, Lauris Edmond, and Bill Sewell, Lincoln U.P. and Daphne Brasell Associates, 1997, pp. 47-54.


"Dancing in the Hand of God: Katherine Mansfield and Religious Belief", in Critical Responses to Katherine Mansfield, ed. Dr Jan Pilditch, Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut, USA, 1996, pp. 211-218.

Conference Papers:

“Language politics in New Zealand: the deprived social and linguistic world of Maori literature in English,” GNEL/MAVEN conference, “The Cultural Politics of English as a World Language,” University of Freiburg, June 2001.

“Testing our Limits: Regionalism, Nationalism, and Selfhood, and the Anglophone Literatures of Oceania,” 23rd ASNEL conference (Association for the study of New Literatures in English), “Towards a Transcultural Future”, Aachen/Liege, May 30 – June 4 2000.

“Testing our Limits” (revision of above), Stout Research Centre, Victoria University of Wellington, “WAKA: Pacific Communities 2000: Perceptions and Representations,” National Library of New Zealand, 28-30 July 2000.

“New Zealand writes out Oz,” Centre for Research in New Literatures in English conference, “Home and Away: Postcolonial Perspectives, Flinders University, Adelaide, October 2000.

“Reefs and Passages: the reading of South Pacific literature”, SPACLALS conference “Imagining Oceania”, University of the South Pacific, Suva, July 1999. (Keynote address).

Conference proceedings:

“Robert Creeley meets the Sentimental Bloke: a Momentary Encounter between New American and Old-fashioned Antipodean Poetics,” The End of the American Century? ed. Peter Bastian and Jan Pilditch, Fulbright NZ and ANZASA, Sydney 2004, pp. 125-132.


“Testing our Limits: Regionalism, Nationalism, and Selfhood, in the Anglophone Literatures of Oceania,” Towards a Transcultural Future: Literature and Human Rights in a ‘Post’-Colonial World, ed. Peter H. Marsden and Geoffrey V. Davis, Rodopi: Amsterdam and New York, 2004, pp. 187-200.


“New Zealand writes out Oz,” The Regenerative Spirit: Polarities of Home and Away, Encounters and Diasporas, in Post-colonial Literatures, ed. Nena Bierbaum, Syd Harrex and Sue Hosking, CRNLE, Flinders University, Adelaide, 2003, pp. 68-76

The Poetry of Lauris Edmond: Introduction and commentary; Auckland U.P. CD., February 2000.


“Reefs and Passages: the reading of South Pacific Literature,” SPAN, No. 48/49 April and October 1999, eds. Ralph Crane and Rhadike Mohanram, SPACLALS, pp. 14-27.

Recent reviews:

Review of Ignatian Spirituality and Contemplative Prayer, ed. Philip Endean SJ, Mystics Quarterly, vol. XXX numbers 3-4, September/December 2004, pp. 142-150.


“Katherine Mansfield and a Way of Seeing”, Katherine Mansfield: Stories and Pictures, ed. Sarah Shieff and Ralph Crane, U. Waikato English Department Occasional Papers 2003, pp. 7-14.


“Beyond Likely Hearing: Kendrick Smithyman,” Landfall 205, University of Otago Press, May 2003, pp. 204-207.


“How to Keep your Secret”, Bill Manhire’s What to call your child, in New Zealand Books Volume 10 Number 1 (Issue 42) March 2000, pp. 15-16.


Review of Creativity and Spirituality: Bonds Between Art and Religion, Earle J. Coleman, SUNY 1998, in Mystics Quarterly, Vol. XXVI No. 2 June 2000, pp. 97-100.

Denis Glover: His Life, Gordon Ogilvie, Godwit Press 1999, reviewed in Landfall 198, Spring 1999, Otago University Press; pp. 293-296.

The Illustrated History of New Zealand, in Span No. 47, Journal of the South Pacific Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language studies, eds Ralph Crane and Radhika Mohanram, October 1998.


“Sheer Glitter: Vincent O’Sullivan’s Seeing You Asked”, New Zealand Books, vol. 8 no. 5, December 1998, pp. 13-14.

"Looping de Loop in Lone Kauri Road: Allen Curnow's Early Days Yet: New and Collected Poems 1941-1997", New Zealand Books vol. 7 no. 5, 1997, pp3-4.

Research Publications:

You may like to view publications from 1997 onwards for Dr Ken Arvidson