Poet Alistair Te Ariki Campbell dies

Celebrated Alistair Te Ariki Campbell has died aged 84. Photo / Simon Haxton

New Zealand poet, playwright and novelist Alistair Te Ariki Campbell has died, aged 84.

Campbell was born in Rarotonga in 1925, shifting to live in a Dunedin orphanage at the age of eight after his parents died.

Despite speaking little English, Penrhyn Maori being his first language, Campbell rose to the top of his class within a few years.

He attended Otago Boys' High School before moving to Wellington where he joined the Wellington Group, writing alongside the likes of James K Baxter, Louis Johnson and W H Oliver.

After marrying Wellington student Fleur Adcock , who gave birth to his first two children, Campbell gained a Bachelor of Arts degree from Victoria University in Wellington in 1953.

He went on to Teachers' College, securing a Diploma of Teaching in 1954.

He had early success with his first book, Mine Eyes Dazzle, in 1950, and went on to work as an editor for School Publications from 1955 until 1972, and writing a novel for children, The Happy Summer, in 1961.

Meanwhile, his personal life changed in 1958, when he divorced Adcock and married Meg Anderson, who had three children with him.

He wrote a series of six plays for radio, the best-known being When the Bough Breaks (1970), which was later turned into a stage version was produced and published in Howard McNaughton's Contemporary New Zealand Plays in 1974.

In 1979 he took part in the Four Poets tour of New Zealand with Sam Hunt, Hone Tuwhare and Jan Kemp.

He tutored creative writing nationally and internationally, and was president of the writers' organisation, PEN, for a year.

In 1997, Campbell was awarded the Pacific Islands Artist's Award and, in 1999, received an honorary doctorate in literature from Victoria University of Wellington.

He received a Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement for poetry in 2005 and was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the same year.

Meg Campbell died in November 2007, and a joint collection of poems written by the couple, It's Love Isn't It, was published the following year.

- NZPA