David Howard reading at the New Zealand High Commission in London, Thurs 18 April

By Dunedin UNESCO City of Literature | Posted:

David will be reading from 'Mate' and tell of the early Dalmatian immigrants to New Zealand with Māori links which inspired his work.

The inspiration behind David's cycle of poems, Mate, is the history of Dalmatian immigrants to NZ in the early 20th century, who were mostly employed digging kauri gum for the roads in the the North Island. Many of them ended up marrying Maori women and the name given to them, and their descendants, is 'Tarara".

David wrote the poetic cycle 'Mate' based on this subject following on from a residency at the Writers House in Pazin, Croatia (where he now lives). Following receipt of a Creative New Zealand Resilience Grant, he was supported by the Dalmatian Cultural Society. The work's main critical influences are the masters and doctoral theses of Senka Bozic-Vrbancic, the latter expanded into Tarara: Croats and Maori in New Zealand: Memory Belonging Identity (Otago University Press, 2008).

David has published several collections, including Rāwaho: The Completed Poems (Cold Hub Press, 2022), which was 44 years in the making. Poems from his last four volumes have appeared in Best New Zealand Poems. David has performed in Nicaragua with the support of the NZ Book Council; received the New Zealand Mid-Career Writers Award and the University of South Pacific Poetry Prize; held the Robert Burns Fellowship, the Otago Wallace Residency, the Ursula Bethell Residency and enjoyed UNESCO City of Literature residencies in Prague Czech Republic (2016) and Ulyanovsk Russia (2019).

My father prayed in Croatian Tickets, Thu, Apr 18, 2024 at 6:30 PM | Eventbrite