Good Things Coming in Threes for Kiwi Poet

Auckland University Press
6 March 2009
For Immediate Release

Good Things Coming in Threes for Kiwi Poet

It’s a great year for Kiwi poet, editor and psychotherapist Michael Harlow, who has already won a trifecta: he has just published a new collection of poems, The Tram Conductor’s Blue Cap (Auckland University Press); he has just taken up the 2009 Robert Burns Fellowship at the University of Otago; and he is concurrently the inaugural Caselberg Artist in Residence in Dunedin.

In the first of a trio of launches for The Tram Conductor’s Blue Cap, in Auckland this week, New Zealand Poet Laureate Michele Leggott said, “In The Tram Conductor’s Blue Cap the words fly and sing and dance. With Michael Harlow you have language on the one hand and you have the world on the other; when you put the two together you get marvellous poetry.”

The Tram Conductor’s Blue Cap will also be launched in Dunedin on 20 March, in conjunction with the English Department of Otago University and UBS Otago, and in Christchurch at Madras Café Books in April.

As part of the Dunedin Heritage Festival this month, Michael Harlow will be conducting a one-day Writing Workshop at the Caselberg Trust cottage in Broad Bay and he is looking forward to contributing to the life of both Otago University and of Dunedin during his dual residencies.

“For me”, he says, “the added bonus is being part of the University community again, and the Dunedin one at large. I've always found this community stimulating, and congenial".

Michael Harlow was born in the United States and arrived in New Zealand in 1968. His six previous books of poetry include Giotto’s Elephant, a poetry finalist in the national Book Awards in 1991,and Cassandra’s Daughter (AUP 2005; 2006). The Associate and Poetry Editor at

Michael Harlow was born in the United States and arrived in New Zealand in 1968. His six previous books of poetry include Giotto’s Elephant, a poetry finalist in the national Book Awards in 1991,and Cassandra’s Daughter (AUP 2005; 2006). The Associate and Poetry Editor at Landfall magazine for a decade, he has also been the Katherine Mansfield Fellow in Menton, a NZ–Australia Exchange Fellow and Wellington’s Randell Cottage Writer in Residence. He has been awarded poetry prizes by the NZ Poetry Society, was the winner of the Takahe Magazine Poetry Prize (2006) and took first prize in the 2008 Bravado International Poetry Prize. His work has appeared in translation in Greek, French, Spanish and German. In 2006 he represented NZ at the Festival Internacional de Poesía de Medellín, Colombia, and at the IV Internacional Seminar of Writers, ‘Frontiers in Movement’ in Monterey, Mexico; and in 2007 at the III Festival Internacional de Poesía de Granada, Nicaragua, and at the IV World Poetry Festival in Caracas, Venezuela. A bilingual, English and Spanish, selection of poems, Today is the Piano’s Birthday, will be published in 2009 by Monte Avila (Venezuela) for their Poets from Around the World series.

Audio clips of Michael Harlow reading his poems and further information about Michael Harlow are available at the nz electronic poetry centre: http://www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz/authors/harlow/index.asp

ENDS