Alistair Campbell (poet)

Alistair Te Ariki Campbell, ONZM (25 June 1925 – 16 August 2009) was a New Zealand poet, playwright, and novelist. His father was a New Zealand Scot and his mother was a Cook Island Maori from Penrhyn Island.

Campbell was born in Rarotonga and spent his childhood on Penrhyn island, the home of his mother, Teu Bosini. His father's name was John Archibald (Jock) Campbell. In 1932, when Campbell was seven, his mother died from tuberculosis. The following year, his father also died, and he was sent with his two brothers to an orphanage in Dunedin, in the South Island of New Zealand.

He lived most of his life in New Zealand, mainly around the Wellington region, and for several decades in Pukerua Bay, Porirua.

Campbell attended Otago Boys' High School in Dunedin, and then studied at the University of Otago and Victoria University of Wellington. At University he became good friends with James K. Baxter, another famous New Zealand poet. He became a member of the Wellington Group in the 1950s. The group was just an affiliation of a number of writers who mostly shared a common opposition to the ideas and writing of Allen Curnow, another notable New Zealand writer.

His first wife was poet, Fleur Adcock, from whom he was later divorced. His second wife, Aline Margaret (Meg) Anderson, was also a poet.

Campbell had a total of five children, two with Fleur and the other three with Meg.

From 1976 to 1979, he was the President of the New Zealand branch of PEN-International.

His poem, The Return, was set to music by Douglas Lilburn.

Campbell received many honours, most notably the New Zealand Book Award for Poetry (1982), the Pacific Islands Artist Award (1998), an Honorary DLitt from Victoria University of Wellington (1999), and a Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement (2005). In 2005 he was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit.

• Alistair Campbell