Author(s): Peter Hooper

Poetry | Aotearoa | Cold Hub

New Zealand West Coast poet, novelist, teacher, bookseller and conservationist, Peter Hooper (1919-1991), was described by Colin McCahon, who used his poems in a number of art works, as a 'poet of grace and truth'. His voice on behalf of nature and the environment, and clear insight into where our treatment of the environment was heading, has only deepened in its relevance in the 21st century. REJOICE INSTEAD offers a more comprehensive selection of Hooper's published work than the rather minimal 1977 Selected Poems--unconstrained by the poet's judgement, while being aware of his own high standards regarding his work. As editor Pat White notes in his introduction: "Peter was a harsh critic of his own work and, as most poets do, channelled a particular thread of those works he held dear." REJOICE INSTEAD includes most of the poems from the slim volumes of poetry that were published in Hooper's lifetime and are no longer easily accessible, along with thirty-nine previously unpublished poems written in the last years of his life. "It is a world-sized, world-shaped book, a 'tremendous room' in its generosity and breadth." --Gregory O'Brien

New Zealand West Coast poet, novelist, teacher, bookseller and conservationist, Peter Hooper (1919-1991), was described by Colin McCahon, who used his poems in a number of art works, as a 'poet of grace and truth'.
His voice on behalf of nature and the environment, and clear insight into where our treatment of the environment was heading, has only deepened in its relevance in the 21st century.

REJOICE INSTEAD offers a more comprehensive selection of Hooper's published work than the rather minimal 1977 Selected Poems--unconstrained by the poet's judgement, while being aware of his own high standards regarding his work. As editor Pat White notes in his introduction: "Peter was a harsh critic of his own work and, as most poets do, channelled a particular thread of those works he held dear." REJOICE INSTEAD includes most of the poems from the slim volumes of poetry that were published in Hooper's lifetime and are no longer easily accessible, along with thirty-nine previously unpublished poems written in the last years of his life.

"It is a world-sized, world-shaped book, a 'tremendous room' in its generosity and breadth." --Gregory O'Brien

Author Biography: Peter Hooper (1919-1991): was a West Coast poet, novelist, teacher, bookseller and conservationist. In a writing career that spanned the decades following World War II until his death in 1991, his reputation as a poet has tended to depend on poems published in slim volumes no longer easily accessible. The exception was Earth Marriage (Fragments III, 1972), a selection of previously published and new work with photographs of the West Coast, which sold two thousand copies within a year. A rather meagre Selected Poems was published by John McIndoe in 1977. Between 1977 and his death in 1991 Hooper published a trilogy of novels: A Song in the Forest (1979); People of the Long Water (1985); and Time and the Forest (1986) which won the New Zealand Book Award for fiction. A collection of short stories, The Goat Paddock and other stories appeared in 1981. Hooper also wrote and published extensively on conservation and environmental subjects.