Brian Turner (New Zealand poet)

Brian Lindsay Turner (4 March 1944 – 5 February 2025) was a New Zealand poet, author, environmental campaigner and field hockey player. He was New Zealand Poet Laureate between 2003 and 2005.

Life and career

Turner was born in Dunedin on 4 March 1944. He played hockey for New Zealand in the 1960s and was a senior cricketer and veteran road cyclist of note. His mountaineering experience included ascending a number of major peaks including Aoraki / Mount Cook.

In 1978, Turner was one of the founders of the South Island Independence Movement.

His writing included columns and reviews for daily and weekly newspapers, articles, given radio talks, and written scripts for TV programmes. His publications included cricket books with his brother Glenn Turner, the former NZ cricket captain, essays, books on fishing, the high country, and eight collections of poetry. His other brother was golfer Greg Turner.

In late 1999, Turner moved to Oturehua, a town of about 40 people in the Maniototo region of Central Otago. He died in Wānaka on 5 February 2025, at the age of 80.

Awards and recognition

• 1979 – Commonwealth Poetry Prize
• 1985 – J.C. Reid Memorial Prize
• 1993 – Montana New Zealand Book Award for Poetry
• 1997 – appointed Canterbury Writer in Residence
• 2003 – appointed Te Mata Estate New Zealand Poet Laureate for two years
• 2009 – Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement in Poetry
• 2010 – Poetry Award for Just This at the New Zealand Post Book Awards
• 2020 – appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to literature and poetry, in the 2020 Queen's Birthday Honours

Bibliography

Poetry

Collections

• Ladders of Rain (John McIndoe, 1978)
• Ancestors (John McIndoe, 1981)
• Listening to the River (John McIndoe, 1983)
• Bones (John McIndoe, 1985)
• All That Blue Can Be (John McIndoe, 1989)
• Beyond (John McIndoe, 1992)
• Taking Off (Victoria University Press, 2001)
• Timeless Land (Longacre Press, 2001) – includes paintings by Grahame Sydney and writing by Owen Marshall
• Footfall (Random House, 2005)
• Just This (Victoria University Press, 2009)
• Inside Outside (Victoria University Press, 2011)
• Elemental: Central Otago Poems (Godwit/Random House, 2012)
• Boundaries: People and Places of Central Otago (Penguin Random House, 2015) – also includes essays and interviews
• Night Fishing (Victoria University Press, 2016)

Memoir

• Somebodies and Nobodies (Random House, 2002)

References

External links

• Interview with Brian Turner, from New Zealand Listener of 5–11 March 2005, Vol 197 no 3382