New Zealand Writers
HARLOW, Michael
Operating through strategies of defamiliarisation, and predisposed to emotional ambiguity, his voice often appears enigmatic.
Author entry from The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature, edited by Roger Robinson and Nelson Wattie (1998). [About the Companion entries]HARLOW, Michael (1937– ), born in the USA of a Greek father and American-Ukrainian mother, travelled extensively in Europe before arriving in New Zealand in 1968.
Known primarily for his poetry, which appears in several New Zealand anthologies, he was, in the 1980s, also an editor of the Caxton Press poetry series and poetry editor of Landfall. Harlow first published in New York (Poems, 1965), in Greece (Events, Greece, 1967–1974, 1974) and in England (The Book of Quiet, 1974). Subsequent titles reveal his Eurocentrism: Nothing But Switzerland and Lemonade (1980), the first book of prose poems in New Zealand, Today Is the Piano’s Birthday (1981), Vlaminck’s Tie (1985) and Giotto’s Elephant (1991), shortlisted in the 1992 Book Awards. Harlow’s sensibility is also identified by a whimsical, questioning persona, and a persistent engagement with the workings of the unconscious.
Operating through strategies of defamiliarisation, and predisposed to emotional ambiguity, his voice often appears enigmatic. But seemingly idiosyncratic elements in his verse—play with poetic conceits, fantasy and dream elements, sexual innuendo—may be underpinned by psychological insight and a sense of the unconscious point of view. His poems have been called ‘personally colourful if rarely confessional’. Consistently independent of local literary models, Harlow ‘found’ materials, and he works in other genres such as the prose poem, performance piece, dream poem and musical performance. His collaboration as librettist with the New Zealand composer Kit Powell, now living in Switzerland, is extensive: Powell’s scores appear in Vlaminck’s Tie; their pieces include Texts for Composition, performed in Christchurch and Switzerland (in German) in 1981; Nelson Songs in Laufen and Zürich in 1986; Les Episodes, Conversation with Questions, commissioned by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra to celebrate its fortieth anniversary, in Wellington in 1987, and The Tower of Babel, commissioned for performance at the Kykart II Festival, St Petersburg in 1995.
He also wrote the script for the short film Heavy Traffic in the Dark (1991) (in collaboration with Stephanie McDonald) and edited Christchurch Teachers College Centennial 1977 (1977). Harlow has been awarded Literary Fund Bursaries (1977, 1990) and the Katherine Mansfield Memorial Fellowship (1986).
He lives in Christchurch where he practises as a Jungian psychotherapist, and is completing a book, Cucumbers and Mad Apples.
JW
Updated Information
Michael Harlow won the Takahe poetry prize in 1998.
Michael Harlow was the 2004 Randell Cottage Writers Trust Resident.
Cassandra's Daughter was published in 2005.
Michael Harlow is available to talk to intermediate and secondary school students. He is prepared to discuss his experiences as a writer, and writing techniques. Harlow would prefer to talk to groups of up to 30 students. He is able to run workshops. He is prepared to travel out of town for Writers in Schools visits.
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