The Wellington Group or Wellington School was a group of poets who worked and lived in and around

Wellington Wellington ( mi, Te Whanganui-a-Tara or ) is the capital city of New Zealand. It is located at the south-western tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Remutaka Range. Wellington is the second-largest city in New Zealand by me ...

, the

capital of New Zealand Wellington has been the capital of New Zealand since 1865. New Zealand's first capital city was Old Russell (Okiato) in 1840–41. Auckland was the second capital from 1841 until 1865, when Parliament was permanently moved to Wellington after an ...

, in the 1950s and 1960s.

History

The movement started with Louis Johnson, who started up the ''Poetry Yearbook'' which ran from 1951 to 1964. In part, it was a reaction to

Allen Curnow Thomas Allen Monro Curnow (17 June 1911 – 23 September 2001) was a New Zealand poet and journalist. Life Curnow was born in Timaru, New Zealand, the son of a fourth generation New Zealander, an Anglican clergyman, and he grew up in a relig ...

's dictum of localism in NZ poetry, emphasising universalism, but both the Wellington Group and Curnow liked to use some degree of

Māori Māori or Maori can refer to: Relating to the Māori people * Māori people of New Zealand, or members of that group * Māori language, the language of the Māori people of New Zealand * Māori culture * Cook Islanders, the Māori people of the C ...

symbolism. Another significant publication was ''Numbers'', which ran 1954–1960.

Members

James K. Baxter James Keir Baxter (29 June 1926 – 22 October 1972) was a New Zealand poet and playwright. He was also known as an activist for the preservation of Māori culture. He is one of New Zealand's most well-known and controversial literary figures. H ...

Peter Bland Peter Bland (born 12 May 1934 in Scarborough, North Yorkshire) is a British-New Zealand poet and actor. Life He emigrated to New Zealand at the age of 20 and graduated from the Victoria University of Wellington. He worked as a radio producer f ...

Alistair Te Ariki Campbell Alistair Te Ariki Campbell ONZM (25 June 1925 – 16 August 2009) was a poet, playwright, and novelist. Born in the Cook Islands, he was the son of a Cook Island Māori mother and a Pākehā father, who both died when he was young, leading to h ...

* Gordon Challis * Louis Johnson

References

* Ousby (ed) ''Cambridge Companion to Literature in English'' (1993) New Zealand poetry History of New Zealand Culture in Wellington 1950s in New Zealand 1960s in New Zealand 1950s in Wellington 1960s in Wellington 20th-century New Zealand literature Literary movements {{poetry-stub