Ivy Gibbs

Last updated • 3 min readFrom Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia

Ivy Olive Gibbs (c. 1886 – 3 October 1966) was a trans-Tasman poet and children's writer based predominantly in New Zealand. Her verse in The Bulletin, Australia, made her well known between 1920 and 1930, and she was widely published in New Zealand between the late 1920s and 1941. Children's verses by Gibbs appeared in The Christian Science Monitor in Boston, North America, 1944–49.

Contents

Life

It is thought that Gibbs was born and educated in England. Little is known about her early life. At some point, she moved to Australia, and it is possible she was educated at the Hyde Park School of Music in Adelaide 1907–10. [1]

From 1913 to 1918, Gibbs seems to have lived in Coonalpyn, South Australia. Newspaper reports about Coonalpyn associated her with concerts at Coonalpyn Hall socials and fundraisers for the local school and Red Cross Society during World War I. [2] From 1920-27, her poems in the Sydney Bulletin give her location as New South Wales.

She arrived in New Zealand from Sydney aboard the Ulimaroa in Wellington, 1 June 1926, [3] and is on the New Zealand Electoral Roll for 1928 in Eden, Auckland. In the 1930s, she was on the committee of the New Zealand Women Writers' and Artists' Society (1932–34) (later known as the New Zealand Women Writers' Society) in Wellington.

After leaving Wellington in 1934, Pat Lawlor in his regular column ‘Among the Books’ for New Zealand Railways Magazine wrote: "Miss Ivy Gibbs, a writer of slender but charming verse, is now a resident of Napier." [4]

The history of the New Zealand Women Writers' Society says from Napier she moved to Australia. [5]

After Australia, she returned to Auckland. The New Zealand Electoral Roll has her as Ivy Gibbs and Ivy Olive Gibbs in Auckland from 1938-1963. She is listed as a 'spinster' and later 'retired'.

Ivy Gibbs died in Auckland on 3 October 1966. She was 80 years of age suggesting her birth was 1865 or 1866. A service was held for her at the Waikumete Chapel Crematorium on Thursday 6 October 1966. [6]

Literary output

The Bulletin (1920–30) and the literary magazine New Zealand Mercury (1933–36) collect much of Gibbs's poetry. A critic referred to her in Sydney, Australia, 1923, as ‘the golden-haired and golden-hearted girl who has written much delightful verse this year.’ [7]

Prior to The New Zealand Mercury and while appearing in The Bulletin, Gibbs also published verse in the New Zealand Radio Record and various Australian papers and journals such as the Sydney Morning Herald , Green Room May, Birth: A Little Journal of Australian Poetry, the Triad, and the Australian Woman's Mirror .

A poem of hers 'The Thrush' appeared in the anthology of contemporary New Zealand verse Kowhai Gold (1930) edited by Quentin Pope reproduced from The Bulletin, 21 July 1927, and another in A Gift Book of New Zealand Verse (1931) edited by "John O’ Dreams" (Helen Longford) reproduced from the New Zealand Radio Record.

She had further publications in the Advocate in Burnie and the Launceston Examiner , both in Tasmania, 1937-41 (some republished from the Auckland New Zealand Herald ). Gibbs also wrote notable World War II poems: ‘Requiescat in Pace’ [8] and ‘Death's No Enemy’ [9] both first published in the New Zealand Herald and later The Advocate in Burnie.

From 1944-49, children's verse of hers appeared under her full name of ‘Ivy Olive Gibbs’ in the international newspaper The Christian Science Monitor in Boston, North America.

Two books of her poetry were published in England: Six Days in a Pensive Mood (1949) and The Day is in a Pensive Mood (1949). The latter book is held by the Hocken Collections in Dunedin, New Zealand.

In 2012, New Zealand poet, editor and critic Mark Pirie compiled a bio-bibliography for her. [10]

Poetry collections by Ivy Gibbs

Related Research Articles

<i>The Advocate</i> (Tasmania) Newspaper in North West and Western Tasmania, Australia

The Advocate is a local newspaper of North-West and Western Tasmania, Australia. It was formerly published under the names The Wellington Times, The Emu Bay Times, and The North Western Advocate and The Emu Bay Times.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robin Hyde</span> New Zealand poet and novelist

Robin Hyde, the pseudonym used by Iris Guiver Wilkinson, was a South African-born New Zealand poet, journalist and novelist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lauris Edmond</span> New Zealand writer

Lauris Dorothy Edmond was a New Zealand poet and writer.

Girolamo Pieri Pecci Ballati Nerli, was an Italian painter who worked and travelled in Australia and New Zealand in the late 19th century influencing Charles Conder and Frances Hodgkins and helping to move Australian and New Zealand art in new directions. His portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery Edinburgh, is usually considered the most searching portrayal of the writer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rosie Scott</span> New Zealand writer

Rosie Scott was a novelist, poet, playwright, short-story writer, non-fiction writer, editor and lecturer, with dual Australian and New Zealand citizenship.

Yuki Kihara is an interdisciplinary artist of Japanese and Samoan descent. In 2008, her work was the subject of a solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; it was the first time a New Zealander and the first time a Pacific Islander had a solo show at the institution. Titled Shigeyuki Kihara: Living Photographs, the exhibition opened from 7 October 2008 to 1 February 2009. Kihara's self-portrait photographs in the exhibitions included nudes in poses that portrayed colonial images of Polynesian people as sexual objects. Her exhibition was followed by an acquisition of Kihara's work for the museum's collection.

Jennifer Compton is a New Zealand-born Australian poet and playwright.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ivy Alvarez</span> Filipina-Australian poet, editor, and reviewer

Ivy Alvarez is a New Zealand-based Filipina Australian poet, editor, and reviewer. Alvarez has had her work featured in various publications in Australia, Canada, England, the Philippines, New Zealand, Ireland, Russia, Scotland, Wales, the US, South Africa, and online.

Marjory Lydia Nicholls was a New Zealand poet, teacher and drama producer. She was a significant figure in New Zealand poetry and theatre between 1910 and 1930, and became a well-known personality in Wellington, with interests in theatre, writing and the arts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mona Tracy</span> NZ childrens writer, journalist and community worker

Mona Innis Tracy was a New Zealand children's novelist, journalist, poet, short-story writer, and community worker. She was best-known for her three children's novels, published between 1927 and 1930, which were adventures set in historical New Zealand.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eileen Duggan</span> New Zealand poet and writer

Eileen May Duggan was a New Zealand poet and journalist, from an Irish Roman Catholic family. She worked in Wellington as a journalist, and wrote a weekly article for the Catholic weekly The New Zealand Tablet for almost fifty years.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Will Lawson</span> Australian poet and writer (1876–1957)

Will Lawson, born in Durham, England, was a popular bush poet, novelist, journalist and historian of Australia. Many of his works had sailing or stage coach themes.

Joanna Margaret Paul was a New Zealand visual artist, poet and film-maker.

Kathleen Dalziel (1881-1969) was an Australian writer who was born in Durban, Colony of Natal in 1881. Born Laura Kathleen Natalie Walker, she arrived in Australia with her family in 1887, where they lived in an isolated area south of Burnie in north-west Tasmania. The family moved to Colac, and later, Melbourne in Victoria where she remained for the rest of her life. Her first marriage was to Frank Womersley at Dunkeld in 1903. After divorcing him in 1921, she married William Brown Dalziel.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shannon Te Ao</span> New Zealand artist

Shannon Te Ao is a New Zealand artist and writer. He won the 2016 Walters Prize.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">New Zealand Company ships</span>

The New Zealand Company was a 19th-century English company that played a key role in the colonisation of New Zealand. The company was formed to carry out the principles of systematic colonisation devised by Edward Gibbon Wakefield, who envisaged the creation of a new-model English society in the southern hemisphere. Under Wakefield's model, the colony would attract capitalists who would then have a ready supply of labour—migrant labourers who could not initially afford to be property owners, but who would have the expectation of one day buying land with their savings.

Ivy Grace Fife (1903–1976), born Ivy Grace Hofmeister, was a New Zealand painter based in Christchurch and Canterbury. Known for her portraits, her work also includes landscapes and is reflective of life in Canterbury and the South Island of New Zealand.

Anna Jackson is a New Zealand poet, fiction and non-fiction writer and an academic.

Alison Grant Robinson Waley was a New Zealand poet, journalist, artist and writer, best known for her memoir A Half of Two Lives: A Personal Memoir, a book about her lifelong affair with writer and translator Arthur Waley.

Ashleigh Young is a poet, essayist, editor and creative writing teacher. She received the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize in 2017 for her second book, a collection of personal essays titled Can You Tolerate This? which also won the Royal Society Te Apārangi Award for General Non-Fiction. She lives in Wellington, New Zealand.

References

  1. ↑ The Advertiser, Adelaide, Australia, miscellaneous references 1907–1910
  2. ↑ The Advertiser, Adelaide, Australia, miscellaneous references 1913-18
  3. ↑ The Evening Post, 1 June 1926
  4. ↑ Pat Lawlor, ‘Among the Books’, New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 9, Issue 2, 1 May 1934
  5. ↑ History of the New Zealand Women's Writers’ Society 1932-1982, compiled by Thelma France et al, Wellington, 1984
  6. ↑ New Zealand Herald, 5 October 1966
  7. ↑ The Mail, Adelaide, 31 March 1932
  8. ↑ Advocate, Burnie, Tasmania, 18 November 1940
  9. ↑ Advocate, Burnie, Tasmania, 5 July 1941
  10. ↑ Ivy Gibbs: A Bio-bibliography, Mark Pirie, Cultural and Political Booklets, Wellington, 2012
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.