Dinah Hawken (born 1943) is a New Zealand poet, creative writing teacher, physiotherapist, counsellor and social worker.

Life and career

Hawken was born in

Hāwera Hāwera is the second-largest centre in the Taranaki region of New Zealand's North Island, with a population of . It is near the coast of the South Taranaki Bight. The origins of the town lie in a government military base that was established i ...

in 1943 and is a trained physiotherapist, psychotherapist and social worker. She worked at

Victoria University of Wellington Victoria University of Wellington ( mi, Te Herenga Waka) is a university in Wellington, New Zealand. It was established in 1897 by Act of Parliament, and was a constituent college of the University of New Zealand. The university is well know ...

as a student counsellor for two decades, and has taught creative writing at the

International Institute of Modern Letters The International Institute of Modern Letters (IIML) ( mi, Te Pūtahi Tuhi Auaha o te Ao) is a centre of creative writing based within Victoria University of Wellington. Founded in 2001, the IIML offers undergraduate and postgraduate courses (i ...

. Her first collection, ''It Has No Sound and Is Blue'', was published in 1987, and won her the

Commonwealth Poetry Prize The Commonwealth Poetry Prize was an annual poetry prize established in 1972, for a first published book of English poetry from a country other than the United Kingdom. It was initially administered jointly by the Commonwealth Institute and the Nat ...

for Best First Time Published Poet that year. It was largely written while she was living in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, where she worked as a social worker while studying for a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at

Brooklyn College Brooklyn College is a public university in Brooklyn, Brooklyn, New York. It is part of the City University of New York system and enrolls about 15,000 undergraduate and 2,800 graduate students on a 35-acre campus. Being New York City's first publ ...

with

John Ashbery John Lawrence Ashbery (July 28, 1927 – September 3, 2017) was an American poet and art critic. Ashbery is considered the most influential American poet of his time. Oxford University literary critic John Bayley wrote that Ashbery "sounded, in ...

. The key poem, "Writing Home", is modelled on the "Jerusalem Sonnets" of James K. Baxter but from a feminist perspective.

Harry Ricketts Harry Ricketts (born 1950) is a poet, biographer, editor, anthologist, critic, academic, literary scholar and cricket writer. He has written biographies of Rudyard Kipling and of a dozen British First World War poets. Life Ricketts was bor ...

, writing for the ''Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature'', considers that she is also influenced by

Wallace Stevens Wallace Stevens (October 2, 1879 – August 2, 1955) was an American modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as an executive for an insurance compa ...

and

Adrienne Rich Adrienne Cecile Rich ( ; May 16, 1929 – March 27, 2012) was an American poet, essayist and feminist. She was called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century", and was credited with bringing "th ...

. Her next collection, ''Small Stories of Devotion'' (1991, published in the United Kingdom in 1995) and established Hawken's reputation as one of several successful women poets who emerged in the 1980s. In 2007 she received the Lauris Edmond Award for Distinguished Contribution to Poetry. In 2008 she wrote seven poems to accompany a performance by the New Zealand String Quartet of ''The Seven Last Words of Christ'' by

Joseph Haydn Franz Joseph Haydn ( , ; 31 March 173231 May 1809) was an Austrian composer of the Classical period (music), Classical period. He was instrumental in the development of chamber music such as the string quartet and piano trio. His contributions ...

. Many of her works feature themes of nature, spirituality and the experiences of women, and her poetry is often written in a prose-like form.

Selected works

* ''It Has No Sound and Is Blue'' (1987) * ''Small Stories of Devotion'' (1991, United Kingdom edition published in 1995) * ''Water, Leaves, Stones'' (1995) * ''The Little Book of Bitching'' (1998) * ''Where We Say We Are'' (2000) * ''Oh There You Are Tui!'' (2001) * ''One Shapely Thing: Poems and journals'' (2006) * ''The Leaf-Ride'' (2011) * ''There Is No Harbour'' (2019) * ''Sea-Light'' (2021)

References

External links

Profile
on

Read NZ Te Pou Muramura Read NZ Te Pou Muramura (formerly the New Zealand Book Council) is a not-for-profit organisation that presents a wide range of programmes to promote books and reading in New Zealand. History It was established in 1972 as a response to UNESCO's ...

website
Author page
at the New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre {{DEFAULTSORT:Hawken, Dinah 1943 births Living people People from Hāwera 20th-century New Zealand poets 21st-century New Zealand poets 20th-century New Zealand women writers 21st-century New Zealand women writers New Zealand women poets New Zealand physiotherapists New Zealand social workers 20th-century New Zealand educators 21st-century New Zealand educators Victoria University of Wellington faculty Brooklyn College alumni