Southland and Otago
Below are the literary figures, literary locations and literary quotes from the Southland and Otago region of the Aotearoa New Zealand Literary Map.
Literary Figures
Oamaru
Nick Ascroft 1973
Fiona Farrell 1947
Greg McGee 1950
Dunedin
James K Baxter 1926-1972
Graham Billing 1936-2001
Paula Boock 1964
Charles Brasch 1909-1973
Janet Frame 1924-2004
Denis Glover 1912-1980
Christine Johnston 1950
John A Lee 1891-1982
Frank McKay 1920-1991
Sandy McKay 1949
Emma Neale 1969
Diana Noonan 1960
Charlotte Randall
Duncan Sarkies 1970
Janette Sinclair 1948
Brian Turner 1944
Mosgiel
Terence Hodgson 1956
Neville Peat 1947
Clyde
Sarah-Kate Lynch 1962
Central Otago
Richard Reeve 1976
Alexandra
Bernadette Hall 1945
Lawrence
Arthur H Adams 1872-1936
Pauline Cartwright 1944
Tapanui
Pat White 1944
Gore
Anne De Roo 1931
Balclutha
Hone Kouka 1968
Kaitangata
Mervyn Thompson 1935-1992
Owaka
Charles Spear 1910-1985
Otautau
Heather Marshall 1927
Invercargill
Gavin Bishop 1946
Ruth Corrin 1939
Ruth Dallas 1919
Dan Davin 1913-1990
Barbara Else 1947
JR Hervey 1889-1958
Bill Manhire 1946
Sue Reidy 1955
Riverton
Frank Acheson 1887-1948
Otautau
Heather Marshall 1927
Tuatapere
Kay McKenzie Cooke
Stewart Island
Sheila Natusch
Literary Locations
Oamaru
Janet Frame Heritage Trail
Dunedin
Dunedin Robert Burns Fellowship & statue
Robert Lord Cottage
Dunedin Writers Walk
Wanaka
Wanaka history walk
Invercargill
Dan Davin birthplace
Literary Quotes
'Their town, called Waimaru [Oamaru], was small as the world and halfway between the South Pole and the equator, that is, forty-five degrees exactly. There was a stone monument just north of the town, to mark the spot, in gold lettering.
- Traveller, the writing said, Stop here. You are now standing between the South Pole and the equator. What did it feel like to be standing at forty-five degrees? It felt no different.'
Janet Frame Owls Do Cry
Where are your bones?
My bones lie in the sea
Where are your bones?
They lie in forgotten lands
stolen, ploughed, and sealed
Where are your bones?
On southern islands
sawed by discovering winds
Where are your bones?
Whisper: Moeraki: Purakanui: Arahura:
Okarito: Murihiku: Rakiura
Where are your bones?
Lying heavy on my heart
Where are your bones?
Dancing as songs and old words in my head
deep in the timelessness of mind
Keri Hulme 'Moeraki Conversations'
'Dunedin, that immense sky sprawled above the hills, with every cloud going somewhere in a trail of white or black smoke pursued by storm and wind and sun.'
Janet Frame The Envoy From Mirror City
'The people are Scotch. They stopped here on their way home to heaven - thinking they had arrived.'
Mark Twain on Dunedin, 1899
'From Waipiata, north to Wedderburn
on a clear, still, bright autumn Saturday,
it's airy and eerie on the old rail trail,
the land sloping right to left
from the Ida and Hawkdun ranges
to the Taieri headwaters, the ridgelines
cut into the sky, the mountains hanging
as if suspended in air rather than
rising out of the brown-top land.
The day's tricked up but not tricked out
and the line runs straight on to Ranfurly
and out the other side, going west.'
Brian Turner 'Biking the Central Otago Rail Trail'
'I used to return, year after year, to a fruit farm in the Cromwell Gorge ... which was to become my spiritual home and the inspiration of my early poems.
This is the kiln that fired
My shaping mind ~ a brilliant waste
By wind and rabbit toothed
And honeycombed, an orchard land
Where a child still dreams
Among the time-lost apple trees...'
Alistair Campbell, Island to Island
'The view through my window is rectangular, fresh, and
unhurried. Unlike Tee-Vee, the view does not do
your thinking for you. The power-pole is festooned
with a choir of singing wires ~ a Kiwi Landscape
of classical distinction. Second-rate artists
leave it out of their pictures, altogether.
Way out and beyond, I sense a whole World in movement
and flex. On the same latitude, Chile nudges, just
over the horizon.
And because the Sea is multi-lingual, I share
its collective heart-beat, with all poets, in all
lands, joined together by oceans of applause ~ and
a fine mutuality of taste, for fish (and chips, please)
With them I share the Seas' broken lines
of white toppings; the curved, green-veined
wave-caverns, like close-bound copper-strands
under a withheld tension ~ and release; their
height reduced to white, tickle-toe-clenchings
in sand ~ back-pedalling.'
Hone Tuwhare 'Kaka Point'
'A small town exacts great conformities. The slightest divergence and you are mad.'
Dan Davin Roads from Home
'The last lamp-post in the world.'
Rudyard Kipling on Invercargill, 1891.
'The pilgrims arrive at the Bluff signpost.
They come to the end quite suddenly
and peer out from the edge of the land
as if they might fall off into the sky.
They glimpse great breadth and distance,
a 'creamy reflection of ice'.
They call to windward inaudibly,
pointing to the signpost, to elsewhere.
They adopt funny poses for the camera.
Some of them run down the slope
and swing on the swing
at the end of the land, at the end of the world.'
Cilla McQueen 'Tourists (ii)'
'Kaikoura, Bluff, the Haast:
places go by and that's how
you leave the past, not even
alphabetical order. And whenever you stop
you say: Do you think
things happened here?
Bill Manhire 'South Island companion'
'...there was a fine bay,
all hills and atmosphere; white
sand, and bush down to the sea's edge;
oyster-boats, too, and Maori
fishermen with Scottish names.'
Fleur Adcock 'Stewart Island'
