Curnow, Allen (1911-2001)

New Zealand poet, dramatist, anthologist, and critic. Associated with the important Phoenix group in the 1930s, as a poet and critic he has influentially explored the possibilities of cultural identity in New Zealand, stressing both the isolation of the poet (particularly in Island and Time, 1941) and the need for poets and the people to speak the same language. Language itself is the focus of more recent work such as Trees, Effigies, Moving Objects (1972) and An Incorrigible Music (1979).

A selection of his plays was published in 1972 and Collected Poems, 1933-1973 appeared in 1974.