| Communications and Development |  |
Published by Communications and Development
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| Professor Kon Kuiper with his latest poetry volume Bounty. |
Christchurch poet and linguistics professor Koenraad Kuiper's fourth book of poetry Bounty will be launched later this month during the University of Canterbury arts festival Platform.
The poems in the collection were composed by Professor Kuiper over the last 10 years. Named after the famous navy vessel, the book contains a strong maritime theme including an opening sequence of sonnets which pays homage to Frank Hurley, the Australian photographer on Shackleton's Endurance and the central sequence which recounts the voyage of the HMS Bounty by means of the ship's blind fiddler Michael Byrn.
Professor Kuiper said the main sequence came about by chance when he read of the blind crew member.
“It seemed that presenting events as a blind man might, indirectly, was a challenge. The story was also extraordinary. Byrn and those of his shipmates who were taken back to England were imprisoned on the deck of HMS Pandora in an iron cage. The Pandora was wrecked on the Barrier Reef and the sailors made their way back to England by way of ship's boat, Timor and then other ships. The punishment for those found guilty of mutiny was to be hanged by their shipmates at the yard arm,” he said.
But floating along with the maritime theme a wide range of topics both ancient and contemporary, exotic and close to home, get the poetic touch in Bounty – from goddess Diana the huntress from Roman mythology to Diana, Princess of Wales, hunted by the paparazzi, from a train of camels in Tombouctou to a freight train crossing Riccarton Road.
Professor Kuiper is head of the School of Classics and Linguistics at the University of Canterbury. He arrived in New Zealand from the Netherlands on a converted Liberty ship in 1951. His poetry has been published in New Zealand, Canada and the Netherlands. In New Zealand his poems have appeared in Islands, Landfall, Poetry New Zealand, Sport and Takahe. He has published three previous books of poetry: Signs of Life, Mikrokosmos and Timepieces.
Bounty will be launched at the University of Canterbury's University Bookshop (UBS) on Wednesday 21 May, during Platform, the University of Canterbury arts festival which runs from 21 May to 1 June.
For further information please contact:
Maria De Cort
Publicist
Canterbury University Press
Tel: +64 3 364 2072
Fax: +64 3 364 2679
Mob: 027 224 5104
maria.decort@canterbury.ac.nz