C.K. Stead
C.K Stead b. Auckland 1932. Has published 13 collections of poems and two of short stories, eleven novels, six books of literary criticism, and edited a number of texts. His novels are published in New Zealand and the UK, and have been translated into a dozen European languages. He was Professor of English at the University of Auckland for twenty years, before taking early retirement in 1986 to write full time. His novel Smith’s Dream became Roger Donaldson’s first movie, Sleeping Dogs, and Sam Neil’s first movie role. He has won a number of literary prizes, including the Katherine Mansfield Award for the short story, the Jessie McKay Award for poetry, the New Zealand Book Award for both poetry and fiction, and the King’s Lynn Poetry Award.
He was awarded a CBE in 1985 for services to New Zealand literature, elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1995, and Senior Visiting Fellow at St John’s College, Oxford in 1997. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Letters by the University of Bristol in 2001. His latest novel, My Name was Judas was first published by Harvill Secker in 2006 and his latest collection of poems, The Black River, by Auckland University Press in 2007, the year in which he received his country’s highest award, the Order of New Zealand (limited to twenty holders), an honour he and Margaret Mahy are currently the only writers to hold. His new collection of essays, Book Self, is appearing in March 2008.
Stead comments: ‘Clearly this poem fits into the dark memento mori theme of The Black River, all of which was written after I had a stroke. In the long run the stroke seems to have had no dire consequences, but it left me, very briefly, dyslexic, and therefore shook me up and made me feel vulnerable and uncertain. “Into Extra Time” retains some of the sense of dislodgement from “normality” induced by the stroke. Jaroslav Seiffert, mentioned in the second part, was the Czech poet who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1984. I have one collection of his poems, An Umbrella in Piccadilly (translated by Ewald Osers), given me by Alan Ross, editor of the London Magazine, who published it in 1983. The yellow buoy is one I swim out to most days of the summer from Kohimarama Beach in Auckland. It takes me between 23 and 30 minutes there and back, depending on wind and waves. In form this is a syllabic poem, with the syllable count 11, 11 and 7 in each triplet.’
Poem: Into Extra Time
