Harry Ricketts
Harry Ricketts was born in London in 1950. He came to live in New Zealand in 1981 where he teaches English literature and creative writing at Victoria University of Wellington. His poems have appeared in journals here and overseas, and he has published nine collections, most recently Just Then (2012). His other books include The Unforgiving Minute: A Life of Rudyard Kipling (1998), Strange Meetings, a group biography of a dozen British WW1 poets (2010), poetry anthologies, personal essays, and a critical book with Paula Green, 99 Ways into New Zealand Poetry (2010).
Ricketts comments: ‘“The unmade bed” was prompted by a colleague asking me to take part in an ekphrasis exercise and write a poem about a particular painting without knowing either the title of the painting or the name of the painter. This poem was the result. The painter, it turned out, was Gerolamo Induno (1825–1890), the title of the painting Triste Presentimento (1862), the context the Risorgimento period in mid-nineteenth-century Italy.’
