O'Brien, Gregory 1961–

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O'Brien, Gregory 1961–

PERSONAL:

Born 1961.

ADDRESSES:

Home—New Zealand. Office—City Gallery Wellington, P.O. Box 2199, Wellington, New Zealand.

CAREER:

Self-employed writer and painter, 1984-96; City Gallery Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand, curator, 1997—. Victoria University of Wellington, writer in residence, 1995, creative writing teacher, 1997-2003. Exhibitions: Work as painter-poet exhibited at Bowen Galleries, Wellington, New Zealand.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Sargeson fellowship, 1988.

WRITINGS:

Location of the Least Person, Auckland University Press (Auckland, New Zealand), 1987.

Dunes and Barns, Modern House, 1988.

Diesel Mystic (novel), Auckland University Press (Auckland, New Zealand), 1990.

Man with a Child's Violin (poetry), Caxton (Christ-church, New Zealand), 1990.

Great Lake, Local Consumption Publications (Sydney, Australia), 1991.

Days beside Water (poetry), Auckland University Press (Auckland, New Zealand, 1993.

Malachi (verse novella), Little Esther Publications (Adelaide, Australia), 1993.

(With Jenny Bornholdt) My Heart Goes Swimming: New Zealand Love Poems, Godwit (Auckland, New Zealand), 1996.

Lands and Deeds: Profiles of Contemporary New Zealand Painters, Godwit (Auckland, New Zealand), 1997.

(Editor, with Jenny Bornholdt and Mark Williams) An Anthology of New Zealand Poetry in English, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1997.

Hotere: Out the Black Window, Godwit (Auckland, New Zealand), 1997.

Irishman & Industry (poetry), 1998.

Winter I Was (poetry), Victoria University Press (Wellington, New Zealand), 1999.

(Editor, with Louise White) Big Weather: Poems of Wellington, Mallinson Rendell (Wellington, New Zealand), 2000.

(Editor, with Te Miringa Hohaia and Lara Strongman) Parihaka: The Art of Passive Resistance, Victoria University Press (Wellington, New Zealand), 2001.

After Bathing at Baxter's: Essays and Notebooks, Victoria University Press (Wellington, New Zealand), 2002.

Welcome to the South Seas: Contemporary New Zealand Art for Young People, Auckland University Press (Wellington, New Zealand), 2004.

(Editor, with Jenny Bornholdt) The Colour of Distance: New Zealand Writers in France, French Writers in New Zealand, Victoria University Press (Wellington, New Zealand), 2005.

Afternoon of an Evening Train (poetry), Victoria University Press (Wellington, New Zealand), 2005.

Elizabeth Thomson—my hi-fi my sci-fi, City Gallery Wellington (Wellington, New Zealand), 2006.

(With Justin Paton) Aberhart (essays), photographs by Laurence Aberhart, Victoria University Press (Wellington, New Zealand), 2007.

News of the Swimmer Reaches Shore (novel), Carcanet (Manchester, England), 2007.

A Nest of Singing Birds: 100 Years of the New Zealand School Journal, Learning Media (Wellington, New Zealand), 2007.

SIDELIGHTS:

In the poetry of Gregory O'Brien, family life is given special attention. The poems in the collection, Winter I Was, which celebrate the birth of a son, are "simply wonderful," according to Landfall reviewer Stuart Murray, "in awe of the sheer fact of parenthood and a new life, but also cunning and knowing and self-deprecatory, as if all new parents feel stunned into seriousness and shocked into absurdity at the same time." As both contributor to and coeditor of An Anthology of New Zealand Poetry in English, O'Brien caught the attention of Overland contributor Pam Brown. His "formal two-, three-, five-line stanzas display an immense writing discipline and yet are, mostly, fantastical, painterly and narrative," Brown said.

A graphic artist as well as a writer, O'Brien also produced the 1996 volume Lands and Deeds: Profiles of Contemporary New Zealand Painters, "a fascinating opportunity to reconnect the word of painted metaphor and geography's traditional concern with land," as Robin Kearns wrote for New Zealand Geographer. While Kearns admired the color reproductions of the paintings, the reviewer noted that it was O'Brien's text that "brings us closest to the painters and their visions. In easily digestible segments, [he] integrates their voices with his own observations."

O'Brien told CA: "With one foot in the literary world and the other in the world of visual arts, as a writer I find myself occupying and exploring the immensely busy border between the two.rdquo;