Nick Ascroft

Last updated
Nick Ascroft
Born1973
Oamaru, New Zealand
OccupationPoet
LanguageEnglish
Notable worksFrom the Author Of
Back with the Human Condition

Nick Ascroft (born 1973) is a New Zealand poet and writer.

Contents

Life

Nick Ascroft was born in Oamaru, New Zealand in 1973. In his career of writing, his poetry has been featured widely in both New Zealand and international journals. [1] Ascroft's published poetry collections have been well received, and he has helped in editing New Zealand literary magazines Landfall, Glottis: New Writing and takahē. Recently he has expanded into non-fiction, writing about football. [2] Ascroft's poetic influences include song lyrics, Bruce Robinson's screenplay for Withnail & I , the wordier skits of Monty Python, Peter Cook or Fry & Laurie, and Tina Fey. [3] Away from writing, Ascroft enjoys competitive Scrabble, indoor soccer, and also identifies as a wikipedian. [4] Ascroft describes the Scrabble urge and the sonnet-writing urge as similar, as they are both about the mathematical puzzle and that he is "genuinely delighted by language." [3]

Career

Nick Ascroft's literary career began in the late 1990s, with three poems, "Circular Table," "Bones" and "The Anatomy of Stars," getting published in the New Zealand literary journal Landfall in 1998. [5] These were the first of many Ascroft poems to be published in the journal over the next couple of decades, with the recent poem "A Writer Wrongs" appearing in Landfall 235 in 2018. [6] In 1998, Ascroft co-founded and co-edited the Dunedin-based journal Glottis, along with poet Richard Reeve. [7] In an editorial, Ascroft described the journal as leaning more heavily towards South Island writers than North Island. While Ascroft and the editors consider Glottis a national magazine, the fact it was based in Dunedin meant that the city was in the magazine's immediate vision. [8]

Ascroft's first collection of poetry, From the Author of, was released in 2000. The reviewer Iain Sharp describes Ascroft as a "maverick [with] clear links to the crowd-wowing troubadour tradition." [9] Sharp states that the "pleasure in reading Ascroft is in watching this quick-witted improviser conjure forth metaphors, mythologies, word-music, then deconstruct them in a flash." [9] In 2003, Ascroft published his second collection of poetry, Nonsense. Ken Bolton, in his review for Landfall, wrote that while "the poems can make you smile and, for a time, not assent," too often "the smile becomes hard to maintain." However, Bolton warmed to the extended sequence of poems called "The Dishwasher's Advocate," which "seemed to me to be indisputably good." [10] Following the publication of his first two poetry collections, Ascroft was awarded (alongside Sarah Quigley) the 2003 Robert Burns Fellowship, which recognised the success and acclaim for his published poetry in his collections and in Landfall. [1] Ascroft also served as guest editor of Landfall in 2005 for a one-off publication. [11]

Ascroft's latest poetry collection Back with the Human Condition was released in 2016. Charlotte Graham described it as "a brilliant book that lets us creep as close to human neuroses and idiosyncrasies as we dare." She finds the work impossible to ignore: "when Ascroft sets off down the lanes of form and style and a surfeit of words tossed everywhere like breadcrumbs, there is nowhere I don’t want to follow." [12] Mary Cresswell described the collection as wonderful, saying that there is "a long-running distinction between people who look on the word as thing or idea and people who look on the word as frisbee. Ascroft is a fine example of the latter. Pay attention to him (and the geminated camel he rode in on)." [13] The poem "Beaux" from this collection was featured in the 2016 Best New Zealand Poems collection. [14] Also in 2016, Ascroft published a book that highlights strategy for struggling indoor football teams. The book, How to Win at 5-a-side, was recommended by Esquire magazine for teams looking to record that first win and “becoming the playground Pirlo you always dreamed of being.” [15]

Ascroft has twice been highly commended in the Kathleen Grattan Award for poetry. In 2015, Ascroft's Nothing is as Inconsiderate as Talking was described by Emma Neale as "a cavorting, satirical imagination" that "hits levels of comedic joy that stand out from any crowd." [16] Two years later, Ascroft’s "Moral Sloth" was also highly commended in the award, with Bill Manhire calling it "a virtuoso display of formal skills." Manhire describes Ascroft as matching Alexander Pope and Lord Byron "in quickness of thought and even (it seems to me) outstrip them in richness of diction." [17]

Works

Related Research Articles

Bill Manhire New Zealand poet, short story writer and professor

William Manhire is a New Zealand poet, short story writer, emeritus professor, and New Zealand's inaugural Poet Laureate (1997–1998). He founded New Zealand's first creative writing course at Victoria University of Wellington in 1975, and has been a strong promoter of New Zealand literature and poetry throughout his career. Many of New Zealand's leading writers graduated from his course. He has received many notable awards including a Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement in 2007 and an Arts Foundation Icon Award in 2018.

Kate Duignan is a New Zealand novelist, short-story writer, reviewer and teacher.

Charles Brasch New Zealand poet, literary editor and arts patron

Charles Orwell Brasch was a New Zealand poet, literary editor and arts patron. He was the founding editor of the literary journal Landfall, and through his 20 years of editing the journal, had a significant impact on the development of a literary and artistic culture in New Zealand. His poetry continues to be published in anthologies today, and he provided substantial philanthropic support to the arts in New Zealand, including by establishing the Robert Burns Fellowship, the Frances Hodgkins Fellowship and the Mozart Fellowship at the University of Otago, by providing financial support to New Zealand writers and artists during his lifetime, and by bequeathing his extensive collection of books and artwork in his will to the Hocken Library and the University of Otago.

Jack Ross, is a New Zealand poet, novelist, translator, editor and lecturer in creative writing. A trilogy of novels has been published by two different publishers, Alan Brunton's Bumper Books and Titus Books.

Michael James Terence Morrissey is a New Zealand poet, short story writer, novelist, editor, feature article writer, book reviewer and columnist. He is the author of thirteen volumes of poetry, two collections of short stories, a memoir, two stage plays and four novels and he has edited five other books.

Leigh Robert Davis was a New Zealand-based writer who created long poems and large-scale, mixed-media projects in which he worked with painters, designers and composers. He was known for the highly experimental nature of his creative work.

Sarah Quigley is a New Zealand-born writer.

Emma Neale New Zealand novelist and poet

Emma Neale is a novelist and poet from New Zealand.

Kate Camp New Zealand poet

Kate Camp is a New Zealand poet and author who currently resides in Wellington.

Kay McKenzie Cooke is a poet from New Zealand.

Airini Beautrais New Zealand poet and short-story writer (born 1982)

Airini Beautrais is a poet and short-story writer from New Zealand.

Carolyn McCurdie is a British-born New Zealand author.

Jillian Sullivan is a writer of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry and a creative writing teacher. Her work has been published in New Zealand and overseas.

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.

The Kathleen Grattan Award is one of New Zealand’s top poetry awards. It is named after Kathleen Grattan, an Auckland poet, who died in 1990. The award was first made in 2008.

Michael Harlow New Zealand poet

Michael Harlow is a poet, publisher, editor and librettist. A recipient of the Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship (1986) and the University of Otago Robert Burns Fellowship (2009), he has twice been a poetry finalist in the New Zealand Book Awards. In 2018 he was awarded the Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement, alongside playwright Renée and critic and curator Wystan Curnow Harlow has published 12 books of poetry and one book on writing poetry.

David Howard (poet) New Zealand poet, writer and editor

David Howard is a New Zealand poet, writer and editor. His works have been widely published and translated into a variety of European languages. Howard was the co-founder of the literary magazine takahē in 1989 and the Canterbury Poets Collective in 1990. In New Zealand he held the Robert Burns Fellowship at the University of Otago in Dunedin in 2013, the Otago Wallace Residency, in Auckland in 2014, and the Ursula Bethell Residency in Christchurch, in 2016. In more recent years he has been the recipient of a number of UNESCO City of Literature Residencies.

Rachel Bush was a New Zealand poet and teacher. Her work was widely published in books, anthologies and literary magazines.

Lynley Edmeades is a New Zealand poet, academic and editor. She has published two poetry collections and held a number of writers' residencies. As of 2021 she is the editor of the New Zealand literary journal Landfall.

Mary Morris Cresswell is a poet living on the Kapiti Coast, New Zealand.

References

  1. 1 2 Nurse to the imagination : 50 years of the Robert Burns Fellowship. Jones, Lawrence. Dunedin, N.Z.: Otago University Press. 2008. ISBN   9781877372650. OCLC   262682120.CS1 maint: others (link)
  2. ↑ "Nick Ascroft Products - Victoria University Press". vup.victoria.ac.nz. Retrieved 2019-05-13.
  3. 1 2 Press, Victoria University (2016-10-11). "These Rough Notes - the VUP blog: Nick Ascroft – 4 Questions". These Rough Notes - the VUP blog. Retrieved 2019-05-20.
  4. ↑ "Nick Ascroft". Annual Annual | NZ. Retrieved 2019-05-13.
  5. ↑ Ascroft, Nick (Spring 1998). "Three Poems". Landfall. 196: 265–272.
  6. ↑ Ascroft, Nick (Autumn 2018). "A Writer Wrongs". Landfall. 235: 65–66.
  7. ↑ Ascroft, Nick (2000). "Editorial". Glottis: New Writing. 4: 7–10.
  8. ↑ Ascroft, Nick (2002). "Editorial". Glottis: New Writing. 7: 6–7.
  9. 1 2 Sharp, Iain (May 2001). "Yin, Yang and Young". Landfall. 201: 163–166.
  10. ↑ Bolton, Ken (Nov 2003). "Sense and Nonsense". Landfall. 206: 167–170.
  11. ↑ "Credits". Landfall. 210: 2. Spring 2005.
  12. ↑ "Words That Shine a Light in the World's Ear". Landfall Review Online. 2017-05-01. Retrieved 2019-05-13.
  13. ↑ Cresswell, Mary (April 2017). "Nick Ascroft - Back with the Human Condition". Takahē. 89.
  14. ↑ "Nick Ascroft 2016 – BEST NEW ZEALAND POEMS" . Retrieved 2019-05-13.
  15. ↑ Pope, Nick (2016-08-23). "7 Expert Tips For Winning Any Five-A-Side Game". Esquire. Retrieved 2019-05-13.
  16. ↑ Neale, Emma (Spring 2015). "Kathleen Grattan Award for Poetry 2015". Landfall. 230: 4–5.
  17. ↑ Manhire, Bill (Nov 2017). "Kathleen Grattan award for poetry 2017 judge's report". Landfall. 234: 4–5.
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.