Let's Meet
Peter Bland

	Art & Poetry Price: $19.99 Availability: now Format: A5, 92pp, Soft Cover IBSN: 1-877338-07-9 Add this book to your shopping bag

About the Book

PETER BLAND has enjoyed an outstanding career in the 
arts in New Zealand and the UK. 

Born in Yorkshire, he emigrated in 1954 and worked with 
the NZBC to establish some of New Zealand's first arts 
and social commentary programmes, He was a co-founder 
of Downstage theatre and its artistic director from 1964-68. 
He was associated with the Wellington group of poets and a 
close friend of James K Baxter, Louis Johnson and Alistair 
Campbell.

As an actor in the 1970s and '80s Peter appeared in 
numerous West End comedies, as a guest artist on many 
UK television programmes, and at the Bristol Old Vic, the 
Chichester Festival Theatre and The Palladium.. He 
returned to New Zealand in 1984 to star in Came a Hot 
Friday, for which he won a GOFTA best film actor award. 
He was also twice nominated for best TV actor.

Peter Bland's Selected Poems was published by Carcanet 
in the UK in 1998. 

REVIEW

Bland's acute actor's ear for timing, inflection and the 
accents of everyday life brings into his verse the rhythms 
and diction of the country's elusive vernacular. His clarity 
of meaning and realism of reference are always subverted 
by his quirky obliqueness of viewpoint, his aphoristic self-
mocking wit, and his taste for the surreal. 
  ~ Roger Robinson, Oxford Companion to NZ Literature

An imaginative opulence. Like the personae that inhabit 
them, the poems are rich in detail and effects. His life's 
work has been compressed until the particulars sparkle.
  ~ Gregory O'Brien, Landfall

He was for many years poetry critic for The London 
Magazine, and has twice been a major prizewinner in the 
Observer/Arvon Foundation international poetry 
competition. Peter has received both a British Society of 
Authors Cholmondeley Award and a Melbourne Festival 
Literary Award for his poetry. 

He lives in Auckland and regularly reviews poetry for the 
NZ Listener.

About the Author

Other books by Peter:
* Mr Maui's Monologues
* Ports of Call