Jump to content

Vincent O'Sullivan (New Zealand writer): Difference between revisions

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Browse history interactively
← Previous editNext edit →
Content deleted Content added
VisualWikitext
mNo edit summary
m added quotes
Line 99: Line 99:


* 2007 ''Still Shines When You Think of It'', edited by [[Bill Manhire]] and [https://www.victoria.ac.nz/fgr/about/staff/peter-whiteford Peter Whiteford]
* 2007 ''Still Shines When You Think of It'', edited by [[Bill Manhire]] and [https://www.victoria.ac.nz/fgr/about/staff/peter-whiteford Peter Whiteford]

== Quotes ==

=== On writing ===

* 'Frankly, I do think I’ve got a considerable gift for buggering around. And I don’t think that hurts, for a writer. I haven’t got the temperament to just be at the workface, the coalface, every day.'<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.noted.co.nz/currently/profiles/vincent-o-sullivan-all-this-by-chance-landmark-book-for-nz-literature/|title=Vincent O’Sullivan's first novel in 20 years a 'landmark book' for NZ literature|last=Noted|website=Noted|language=en|access-date=2019-06-25}}</ref>
* 'To me, writing is a solitary vice, really. You lock yourself in a room and don’t like anyone finding you doing it.'<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.noted.co.nz/currently/profiles/vincent-o-sullivan-all-this-by-chance-landmark-book-for-nz-literature/|title=Vincent O’Sullivan's first novel in 20 years a 'landmark book' for NZ literature|last=Noted|website=Noted|language=en|access-date=2019-06-25}}</ref>
* 'I'm always very impressed by writers who have a very strict regimen that they keep to. I admire it, but I certainly don't envy it.'
* 'If I may rattle the banner for a moment, poetry is hospitable to pretty much anything, other than the cosy and complacent.'<ref name=":0">{{Cite web|url=http://www.poetlaureate.org.nz/2013/10/first-day-on-beat.html|title=First day on the beat|last=|first=|date=|website=|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=|access-date=2019-06-25}}</ref>
* 'I don't think many prescriptions for poetry stand up apart from one – if it isn't individual, if it's not "the cry of its occasion", then why aren't we doing something else?' <ref name=":0" />

=== On age ===

* 'I just think that if you lose your capacity for being moved or angered by things that may have provoked you 20 years ago, if you've levelled off to that extent, I think the board's been playing just a bit too thin. I wouldn't care for that. I'd hate to think my last years were spent benignly on my veranda in a rocking chair, saying, "G'day" to everyone who goes past.'<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/news/article.cfm?c_id=6&objectid=12226568|title=The Confession Box: Vincent O'Sullivan|date=2019-05-10|access-date=2019-06-25|language=en-NZ|issn=1170-0777}}</ref>

=== On war ===

* 'I wouldn't say Ross [Harris] and I were obsessed with the war. It just strikes us, as I expect it does a lot of New Zealanders, as one of the major events in our history. So obviously how it affected young men at that time, and civilians and women and families, is of great interest to us because we are New Zealanders.'<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.odt.co.nz/news/ww100/requiem-fallen|title=Requiem for the fallen|date=2014-10-03|website=Otago Daily Times Online News|language=en|access-date=2019-06-25}}</ref>

=== On Katherine Mansfield ===

* 'It has always struck me as a curious thing, how readers at times so hanker to own an author, beyond carrying her books in a shoulder bag, or reading her in a library. That urge to get closer, to know what life was like when she wasn’t writing, to pick up scraps she didn’t know she had let drop.'<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://thespinoff.co.nz/books/28-03-2017/let-us-now-contemplate-what-to-do-with-katherine-mansfields-bones-a-proposal-by-vincent-osullivan/|title=Let us now contemplate what to do with Katherine Mansfield's bones: a proposal by Vincent O'Sullivan|date=2017-03-28|website=The Spinoff|access-date=2019-06-25}}</ref>

=== On Ralph Hotere ===

* 'The marae, the church, the school, the people. The four shaping presences for the young Hotere. Then that dark fifth, the War.'<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.noted.co.nz/archive/listener-nz-2013/ralph-hotere-coming-home/|title=Ralph Hotere: Coming Home - The Listener|last=Noted|website=Noted|language=en|access-date=2019-06-25}}</ref>
* 'There’s a very interesting paradox at the heart of Hotere’s best work; he is the most important political painter we have and yet at the same time he is so attentive to aesthetic values.'<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://culturalicons.co.nz/04-vincent-osullivan/|title=04. Vincent O’Sullivan – Cultural Icons|language=en-US|access-date=2019-06-25}}</ref>


==Further reading==
==Further reading==

Revision as of 03:31, 25 June 2019

Not to be confused with Vincent O'Sullivan (American writer).

Vincent Gerard O’Sullivan, DCNZM (born 28 September 1937, in Auckland, New Zealand) is one of New Zealand's best-known writers. He is a poet, short story writer, novelist, playwright, critic, editor, biographer, and librettist. The recipient of many literary prizes and residencies, in 2000 O’Sullivan was made a Distinguished Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit.[1] He was awarded the Creative New Zealand Michael King Writer’s Fellowship in 2004[2] and the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in 2006.[3] He was the New Zealand Poet Laureate for the term 2013–2015.[4][5] The son of Timothy O'Sullivan (b. Tralee, Ireland) and Myra O'Sullivan (née McKean), O'Sullivan is the youngest of five. His first marriage was to Tui Rererangi Walsh, with whom he had two children, Dominic O'Sullivan (1970) and Deirdre O'Sullivan (1973).

He attended St Joseph's Primary, Grey Lynn, and Sacred Heart College, Auckland. He graduated from the University of Auckland and Oxford University and lectured at Victoria University of Wellington (1963–66) and the University of Waikato (1968–78).

He served as literary editor of the NZ Listener (1979–80),[6] and then (1981–87) won a series of writer’s residencies and research fellowships in universities in Australia and New Zealand: Victoria (Wellington), Tasmania, Deakin (Geelong), Flinders (South Australia), Western Australia and Queensland. These were interrupted by a year as resident playwright at Downstage Theatre, Wellington (1983). In 1988 he resumed his academic career as professor of English at Victoria University of Wellington.

He lives in Dunedin.

Awards and Honours

Works

Poetry

  • 1965 Our Burning Time
  • 1969 Revenants
  • 1973 Bearings
  • 1976 From the Indian Funeral
  • 1977 Butcher & Co.
  • 1979 Brother Jonathan, Brother Kafka
  • 1982 The Rose Ballroom and Other Poems
  • 1982 The Butcher Papers
  • 1986 The Pilate Tapes
  • 1992 Selected Poems
  • 1988 Seeing You Asked
  • 2001 Lucky Table
  • 2007 Blame Vermeer
  • 2009 Further Convictions Pending: Poems 1998–2008
  • 2011 The Movie May Be Slightly Different
  • 2013 Us, Then
  • 2015 Being Here: Selected Poems
  • 2016 And So It Is: New Poems

Short Stories

  • 1978 The Boy, The Bridge, The River
  • 1981 Dandy Edison for Lunch and Other Stories
  • 1985 Survivals
  • 1990 The Snow in Spain: Short Stories
  • 1992 Palms and Minarets: Selected Stories
  • 2014 The Families: Stories

Novels

  • 1976 Miracle: A Romance
  • 1993 Let the River Stand
  • 2018 All This By Chance

Plays

  • Shuriken (Downstage, Wellington, 1983)
  • Ordinary Nights in Ward 10 (New Depot, Wellington, 1984)
  • Jones and Jones (Downstage, 1988)
  • Billy (Bats Theatre, Wellington, 1989)
  • The Lives and Loves of Harry and George (Downstage, Wellington, 1994)
  • Take the Moon Mr Casement (Court Theatre, Christchurch, 1996)

Nonfiction

  • 1974 Katherine Mansfield's New Zealand (revised 2013)
  • 1976 James K. Baxter (New Zealand Writers and Their Work series)
  • 2002 On Longing (Montana Essay Series)
  • 2003 Long Journey to the Border: A Life of John Mulgan

Edited works

  • 1970 An Anthology of Twentieth-Century New Zealand Poetry (Revised 1976 and 1987)
  • 1975 New Zealand Short Stories: Third Series
  • 1983 The Oxford Anthology of New Zealand Writing Since 1945, co-editor with MacDonald P. Jackson
  • 1982 Mansfield's The Aloe, with Prelude
  • 1985 Collected Poems: Ursula Bethell
  • 1988 Poems of Katherine Mansfield
  • 1989 The Selected Letters of Katherine Mansfield
  • 1992 The Oxford Book of New Zealand Short Stories
  • 1993 Intersecting Lines: The Memoirs of Ian Milner
  • 1996, 2003 The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield (five vols.), co-editor with Margaret Scott
  • 1997 New Zealand Stories: Katherine Mansfield
  • 2006 The Collected Fiction of Katherine Mansfield, 1916–1922 (two vols), co-editor with Gerri Kimber

Librettos

  • 2002 Black Ice (with composer Ross Harris)
  • 2004 Lines from the Beach House (with composer David Farquhar)
  • 2008 The Floating Bride, the Crimson Village (with composer Ross Harris)
  • 2010 The Abiding Tides (with composer Ross Harris)
  • 2012 Songs for Beatrice: Making Light of Time (with composer Ross Harris)
  • 2014 Notes from the Front: Songs on Alexander Aitken (with composer Ross Harris)
  • 2014 Requiem for the Fallen (with composer Ross Harris)
  • 2014 If Blood Be the Price (with composer Ross Harris)
  • 2016 Brass Poppies (with composer Ross Harris)
  • 2018 Face (with composer Ross Harris)

Festschrift

Quotes

On writing

  • 'Frankly, I do think I’ve got a considerable gift for buggering around. And I don’t think that hurts, for a writer. I haven’t got the temperament to just be at the workface, the coalface, every day.'[9]
  • 'To me, writing is a solitary vice, really. You lock yourself in a room and don’t like anyone finding you doing it.'[10]
  • 'I'm always very impressed by writers who have a very strict regimen that they keep to. I admire it, but I certainly don't envy it.'
  • 'If I may rattle the banner for a moment, poetry is hospitable to pretty much anything, other than the cosy and complacent.'[11]
  • 'I don't think many prescriptions for poetry stand up apart from one – if it isn't individual, if it's not "the cry of its occasion", then why aren't we doing something else?' [11]

On age

  • 'I just think that if you lose your capacity for being moved or angered by things that may have provoked you 20 years ago, if you've levelled off to that extent, I think the board's been playing just a bit too thin. I wouldn't care for that. I'd hate to think my last years were spent benignly on my veranda in a rocking chair, saying, "G'day" to everyone who goes past.'[12]

On war

  • 'I wouldn't say Ross [Harris] and I were obsessed with the war. It just strikes us, as I expect it does a lot of New Zealanders, as one of the major events in our history. So obviously how it affected young men at that time, and civilians and women and families, is of great interest to us because we are New Zealanders.'[13]

On Katherine Mansfield

  • 'It has always struck me as a curious thing, how readers at times so hanker to own an author, beyond carrying her books in a shoulder bag, or reading her in a library. That urge to get closer, to know what life was like when she wasn’t writing, to pick up scraps she didn’t know she had let drop.'[14]

On Ralph Hotere

  • 'The marae, the church, the school, the people. The four shaping presences for the young Hotere. Then that dark fifth, the War.'[15]
  • 'There’s a very interesting paradox at the heart of Hotere’s best work; he is the most important political painter we have and yet at the same time he is so attentive to aesthetic values.'[16]

Further reading

  • '10 Questions: Vincent O'Sullivan', New Zealand String Quartet, 20 February 2014[17]
  • 'Vincent O'Sullivan: NZ poet, author, biographer', Radio New Zealand, 28 February 2014[18]
  • 'Ross Harris and Vincent O'Sullivan', Radio New Zealand, 1 March 2016[19]
  • 'Let us now contemplate what to do with Katherine Mansfield's bones: A proposal by Vincent O'Sullivan', The Spinoff, 28 March 2017[20]
  • 'Vincent O'Sullivan's first novel in 20 years a "landmark book" for NZ literature', by Mike White, North and South, 5 November 2018[21]
  • 'The deep discomfort of remembering', by Ann Beaglehole, New Zealand Review of Books / Pukapuka Aotearoa, 6 June 2018[22]
  • All This By Chance reviewed by Nicholas Reid on Stuff.co.nz, 11 March 2018 [23]
  • 'Book of the Week: The best New Zealand novel of 2018': All This By Chance reviewed by Elizabeth Alley, The Spinoff, 22 March 2018[24]
  • All This By Chance reviewed by Marcus Hobson on NZ Booklovers[25]
  • All This By Chance reviewed by Lesley McIntosh on The Reader, NZ Booksellers blog, 19 April 2018[26]
  • 'Acclaimed writers Vincent O’Sullivan and Diana Wichtel explore their very different approaches to representing the Holocaust', Radio New Zealand, 26 December 2018[27]
  • 'The Confession Box: Vincent O'Sullivan', New Zealand Herald, 11 May 2019 [28]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Knights and Dames of the New Zealand Order of Merit". Knights and Dames of the New Zealand Order of Merit. Retrieved 2019-06-24.
  2. ^ "Vincent O'Sullivan awarded CNZ's Michael King Fellowship". The Big Idea. 2004-06-21. Retrieved 2019-06-24.
  3. ^ "Prime Minister's Awards for literary achievement". www.creativenz.govt.nz. Retrieved 2019-06-24.
  4. ^ Monday; August 2014, 11; Day, 5:00 pm Press Release: National Poetry. "NZ celebrates poetry with National Poetry Day on 22 August | Scoop News". www.scoop.co.nz. Retrieved 2019-06-24. {{cite web}}: |first2= has numeric name (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  5. ^ Publications, Europa (2003). International Who's Who of Authors and Writers 2004. Psychology Press. ISBN 9781857431797.
  6. ^ "| New Zealand Book Council". www.bookcouncil.org.nz. Retrieved 2019-06-25.
  7. ^ "Previous winners". Creative New Zealand. Retrieved October 24, 2013.
  8. ^ "Video: 2016 Honoured New Zealand Writer: Vincent O'Sullivan - Look & Listen • Auckland Writers Festival". www.writersfestival.co.nz. Retrieved 2019-06-24.
  9. ^ Noted. "Vincent O'Sullivan's first novel in 20 years a 'landmark book' for NZ literature". Noted. Retrieved 2019-06-25.
  10. ^ Noted. "Vincent O'Sullivan's first novel in 20 years a 'landmark book' for NZ literature". Noted. Retrieved 2019-06-25.
  11. ^ a b "First day on the beat". Retrieved 2019-06-25. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |dead-url= (help)
  12. ^ "The Confession Box: Vincent O'Sullivan". 2019-05-10. ISSN 1170-0777. Retrieved 2019-06-25.
  13. ^ "Requiem for the fallen". Otago Daily Times Online News. 2014-10-03. Retrieved 2019-06-25.
  14. ^ "Let us now contemplate what to do with Katherine Mansfield's bones: a proposal by Vincent O'Sullivan". The Spinoff. 2017-03-28. Retrieved 2019-06-25.
  15. ^ Noted. "Ralph Hotere: Coming Home - The Listener". Noted. Retrieved 2019-06-25.
  16. ^ "04. Vincent O'Sullivan – Cultural Icons". Retrieved 2019-06-25.
  17. ^ "News & Reviews » NZSQ". nzsq.org.nz. Retrieved 2019-06-25.
  18. ^ "Vincent O'Sullivan - NZ Poet, author, biographer". RNZ. 2014-02-28. Retrieved 2019-06-25.
  19. ^ "Ross Harris and Vincent O'Sullivan". RNZ. 2016-03-01. Retrieved 2019-06-25.
  20. ^ "Let us now contemplate what to do with Katherine Mansfield's bones: a proposal by Vincent O'Sullivan". The Spinoff. 2017-03-28. Retrieved 2019-06-24.
  21. ^ Noted. "Vincent O'Sullivan's first novel in 20 years a 'landmark book' for NZ literature". Noted. Retrieved 2019-06-24.
  22. ^ Books, N. Z. (2018-06-06). "The deep discomfort of remembering, Ann Beaglehole". New Zealand Review of Books Pukapuka Aotearoa. Retrieved 2019-06-24.
  23. ^ "Book review: All This By Chance by Vincent O'Sullivan". Stuff. Retrieved 2019-06-24.
  24. ^ Alley, Elizabeth (2018-03-22). "Book of the Week: The best New Zealand novel of 2018". The Spinoff. Retrieved 2019-06-24.
  25. ^ "Post | NZ Booklovers". nzbooklovers. Retrieved 2019-06-24.
  26. ^ booksellersnz (2018-04-19). "Book Review: All This By Chance, by Vincent O'Sullivan". Retrieved 2019-06-24.
  27. ^ "Acclaimed writers Vincent O'Sullivan and Diana Wichtel explore their very different approaches to representing the Holocaust". RNZ. 2018-12-18. Retrieved 2019-06-25.
  28. ^ "The Confession Box: Vincent O'Sullivan". 2019-05-10. ISSN 1170-0777. Retrieved 2019-06-24.
Cultural offices
Preceded by New Zealand Poet Laureate
2013–2015 		Succeeded by
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vincent_O%27Sullivan_(New_Zealand_writer)&oldid=903336212"