Peter Olds

Peter John Olds (2 June 1944 – 31 August 2023)[1] was a New Zealand poet from Dunedin. He was regarded as being a significant contributor within New Zealand literary circles, in particular, having an influence with younger poets in the 1970s. Olds held the University of Otago Robert Burns Fellowship and was the inaugural winner of the Janet Frame Literary Award. During the 1970s he spent time in the community of Jerusalem with James K Baxter.

For the Australian inventor of the conveyor system, see Screw conveyor § Olds elevator.

Peter Olds
Olds in 2014
Olds in 2014
BornPeter John Olds
(1944-06-02)2 June 1944
Christchurch, New Zealand
Died31 August 2023(2023-08-31) (aged 79)
Dunedin, New Zealand
OccupationWriter
GenrePoetry
Notable awardsRobert Burns Fellowship

Selected publications

Early work

Olds left school at 15, settled in Dunedin in the mid-60s and began writing in 1966, completing a one-act play while he was employed by the Globe Theatre building stage sets.[2] In 1968 he suffered a breakdown, and after spending time in a mental hospital, joined James K. Baxter at the Jerusalem commune, returning to Dunedin in 1971 in order to write his first volume of poetry, Lady Moss Revived (1972).[2] This was followed by V-8 Poems (1972), The Snow and the Glass Window (1973), Freeway (1974), Doctor’s Rock (1976) and Beethoven’s Guitar and After Looking for Broadway (1980). His published broadsheets include Exit: 2 Poems (1971), Schizophrenic Highway (1971),[3] and The Habits You Left Behind: Poem (1972). He replied to his friend James K. Baxter's poem Letter to Peter Olds (1972) with his Doctor’s Rock.[4]

Later collections

Poetry Reading at Kaka Point was published in 2006,[5] and In the Dragon Cafe, which features Letter to Hone Tuwhare in 2007.[6] Under the Dundas Street Bridge, previewed as being "personal...the author takes us tripping down alleyways of his own confusion: waterbottle in backpack, notepad in hand, stalking the town like an evangelist on a mission", was released in 2012.[7] In 2014 You fit the description: the selected poems of Peter Olds was published.[8] A review of the book by the publisher included an introduction by Ian Wedde.[9]

Taking my Jacket for a Walk, a work completed by Olds in 2017, was translated into Spanish in 2020 by Dr Rogelio Guedea,[10] a "Mexican-born poet, crime novelist and academic", who taught Spanish at the University of Otago where he became familiar with Olds' work. Guedea said that Olds was an important writer whose work deserved to be read more widely. He described Olds as having a "great critical sense of humour...[and was]...wonderful at capturing the absurdity of life". Olds was surprised and pleased with the outcome.[11]

Sheep Truck and other poems (2022) is described on the publisher's website as "a collection of 29 new poems by veteran Dunedin poet Peter Olds. Subjects include flying, dental treatment, encountering Charles Bukowski in the Dunedin Public Library, and not wanting to get out of bed."[12]

Impact on the New Zealand literary scene

The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature notes that Olds was "considered a central figure to many younger poets in the 1970s because of his ability to incorporate rebellious detail of contemporary experience with music, drugs and the concerns and language of the street."[13] When promoting a symposium to Olds in September 2019, the University of Otago published [that] "Peter Olds' writing has been important to poets and other readers of New Zealand poetry since the 1970s, bringing to the centre of attention the unidentified, unclaimed, the marginal, the dispossessed, the trespasser, but also the exuberant, the childish, the lively and the conversational."[14]

David Eggleton has said of him as a poet:

Olds is a master of laconic comedy, offering us delicate absurdist perceptions robustly expressed: childhood winter mornings in an antiquated Christchurch, a portrait of his father as 'a clergyman sitting up in bed ... rolling a racehorse cigarette', a glancing view of a dog described as ' a walking/ chucked-out bargain-basement carpet'...Olds weaves a consciousness of the moment into a personal mythography.[15]

Influences on his work

Influences on his poetry include American rock'n'roll, the 1950s beat poetry of Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, and many aspects from the counter-culture of the time such as drugs, sex and depression are regular themes, particularly in his early poetry.[16] The Poet Laureate, David Eggleton argued that Olds' personal vision in his poems is reflected in "life, death, greed, humanity, poverty, gentrification, Methodism, bees, love, spirituality, medication, buses, trains, clapped-out pre-War Fords, and an immaculately restored white Oldsmobile Convertible with pink vinyl hood...echoing Jack Kerouac's On the Road...the beat generation, reaching New Zealand and its 1950s bodgies and widgies, and reaching Peter Olds, too, as he recalled in his 2012 jukebox poem 'Love Me Do/1963'."[15]

A friendship with James K. Baxter influenced what has been called the romantic tendency toward "reflective narratives of circumstantial personal experience" in his poetry.[16] Being the son of a Methodist minister, Olds also shared a religious background with Baxter and one commentator has noted that it is "easy to see how such early influences could lead the young Olds to identify with the vatic power of language and poetry’s associated mystique...[and see]... Baxter as a liberating example of the poet-seer’s defiant non-conformity."[16] Victor Billot has said of an early interaction with Baxter, that "a bearded poet-shaman with burning eyes staring at you on a street corner in Dunedin … asking [Olds] to join him on God’s instruction at a backwoods commune" was likely to have made a big impact on the young poet at that time in his life.[17]

When his poem At Murdering Beach was published, Olds shared one aspect of his inspiration:

I love to go to places of interest where people once lived in pre-European times. I like to imagine what it was like for those who had only a bone and stone technology between themselves and extinction. In the year 2000 & something, Murdering Beach (Whareakeake) is not a bad place for a picnic and a swim. Some surfers find good swells out among the black rocks beyond the cliffs at the ends of the beach.[18]

Community recognition
Peter Olds writers' walk plaque

When the Dunedin City Council published A Town trod by Poets (2020), to celebrate the city being designated as a UNESCO Creative City of Literature,[19] Olds said he had "always wanted to be a photographer...I love the visual in poetry — this [book] was a great opportunity to marry the two."[20] Dunedin City of Literature director Nicky Page described Olds' images as "brilliant, noting that he had "subsequently offered some of his personal photographs for this exciting project, and his magnificent series of local graffiti images will be a source of nostalgia for one generation and intrigue for another."[21]

In recognition of his contribution to local literature, Olds' name was added to the Dunedin Writers' Walk with an official plaque unveiled on Friday 18 February 2022. The Mayor of Dunedin Aaron Hawkins, said the walk through the Octagon was an "ever-present reminder of why the city had been designated by Unesco as a City of Literature." Roger Hickin, a publisher who had a long association with Olds, described him as Dunedin's "unofficial poet laureate", noting that the award was a long over due acknowledgement of poems which were often vivid and authentic stories that captured what happened on the streets.[22][23]

Death

Olds died on 31 August 2023.[24][25]

Awards
  • Olds held the Robert Burns Fellowship in 1978.[26][27]
  • A work by Olds, Disjointed on Wellington Railway Station was selected for Best New Zealand Poems 2001.[4]
  • In 2005 Olds was the first recipient of the Janet Frame Literary Trust Award for Poetry.[28]

References
  1. "In memory of Peter John Olds". A Memory Tree. Archived from the original on 6 October 2023. Retrieved 21 September 2023.
  2. "Peter Olds". New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre (nzepc). Archived from the original on 9 February 2022. Retrieved 31 March 2021.
  3. Olds, Peter (1972). Schizophrenic highway (2 (First edition published 1971) ed.). National Library: Montgomery Press. p. 5. Archived from the original on 19 February 2022. Retrieved 31 March 2021.
  4. "About the Author: Olds, Peter". Read NZ Te Pou Muramura. Archived from the original on 27 January 2020.
  5. Olds, Peter (1 November 2006). Poetry reading at Kaka Point. Wheelers Books: Steele Roberts Aotearoa Ltd. p. 61. ISBN 9781877338960. Archived from the original on 5 May 2022. Retrieved 31 March 2021.
  6. Olds, Peter (2007). In the dragon cafe. National Library: Kilmog Press. p. 16. ISBN 9780473119775. Archived from the original on 5 May 2022. Retrieved 31 March 2021.
  7. Olds, Peter (30 September 2012). Under the Dundas Street Bridge. Wheelers Books: Steele Roberts Aotearoa Ltd. p. 70. ISBN 9781877577833. Archived from the original on 5 May 2022. Retrieved 31 March 2021.
  8. Olds, Peter (2014). You fit the description the selected poems of Peter Olds (Poems) (First ed.). Cold Hub Press. ISBN 9780473298036. OL 31253555M. Archived from the original on 5 May 2022. Retrieved 31 March 2021.
  9. You fit the description. The selected poems of Peter Olds (Review). Cold Hub Press. Archived from the original on 29 April 2022. Retrieved 31 March 2021.
  10. Elder, Vaughan (29 May 2013). "Otago lecturer's novel tops bestseller list". Otago Daily Times. Archived from the original on 1 September 2019. Retrieved 19 February 2022.
  11. Gibbs, John (7 October 2020). "Dunedin poet's book translated". Otago Daily Times. Archived from the original on 19 February 2022. Retrieved 19 February 2022.
  12. Olds, Peter (2022). Sheep Truck and other poems. Cold Hub Press. ISBN 978-0-473-62734-8. Archived from the original on 5 May 2022.
  13. Robinson, Roger; Wattie, Nelson (1998). The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature. Oxford University. p. 431. ISBN 0-19-558348-5.
  14. Events. "Noticing Peter Olds: A symposium on the Dunedin poet". University of Otago. Archived from the original on 5 May 2022. Retrieved 31 March 2021.
  15. Eggleton, David (16 October 2019). "Taking a Line for a Walk: The Poetry of Peter Olds". New Zealand Poet Laureate. Archived from the original on 29 January 2022. Retrieved 31 March 2021.
  16. Reeve, Richard (1 May 2015). "you fit the description: The selected poems of Peter Olds". Landfall Review. Archived from the original on 20 April 2021. Retrieved 31 March 2021.
  17. Billot, Victor (7 September 2022). "Portrait: Peter Olds, by Victor Billot On a delinquent, a wanderer, a literary icon ". Newsroom. Archived from the original on 6 September 2022. Retrieved 11 September 2022.
  18. Entwistle, Peter (1998). Behold the Moon Cited in: Orangahau Best New Zealand Poems. Daniel Press, Dunedin. Archived from the original on 16 February 2022. Retrieved 31 March 2021.
  19. A Town Trod by Poets. Dunedin Public Libraries. October 2020. Archived from the original on 16 February 2022. Retrieved 31 March 2021.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  20. Gibb, John (24 October 2020). "Streets of city put to verse". Otago Daily Times. Archived from the original on 9 January 2022. Retrieved 31 March 2021.
  21. Gibb, John (23 June 2018). "Poet enjoys photography for documenting ephemera". Otago Daily Times. Archived from the original on 19 February 2022. Retrieved 19 February 2022.
  22. MacLean, Hamish (21 February 2022). "Two additions for Dunedin Writers' Walk". Otago Daily Times. Archived from the original on 21 February 2022. Retrieved 22 February 2022.
  23. Freeman, Lynn (13 February 2022). "Two new names on Dunedin's Writers' Walk" (Standing Room Only). Radio New Zealand. Archived from the original on 17 February 2022. Retrieved 22 February 2022.
  24. John, Chris (1 September 2023). "Peter Olds Obituary, Dunedin Public Libraries Founder Sadly Passed Away". Requiem Chapel. Archived from the original on 1 September 2023. Retrieved 7 October 2023.
  25. Green, Paula (2023). "Poetry Shelf pays tribute to Peter Olds (1944 – 2023)". NZ Poetry Shelf. Archived from the original on 7 September 2023. Retrieved 7 October 2023.
  26. "The Robert Burns Fellowship - previous recipients since the Fellowship was established". University of Otago. Archived from the original on 5 December 2021. Retrieved 31 March 2021.
  27. "Nourishing the Roots: An Exhibition celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Robert Burns Scholarship at the University of Otago. Peter Olds 1978". University of Otago. Archived from the original on 28 March 2023. Retrieved 7 October 2023.
  28. "Janet Frame Literary Trust Awards". Janet Frame (Official Web Site of the Janet Frame Estate). Archived from the original on 24 July 2021. Retrieved 7 October 2022.
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