Stephen Oliver

Stephen Oliver (born 1950) is a New Zealand poet. Born in Wellington in 1950, he has long lived in Australia. He worked early on as a news announcer, journalist and copywriter, experiences that may have shaped the compressed, vivid language of his later poetry. In 1975 he published his first collection, Henwise, and has continued to write since, producing more than ten poetry collections, including Unmanned, Deadly Pollen and Night of Warehouses: Poems 1978-2000; three of his works are held in this catalogue. His poems have been translated into several languages. Public information is limited, making it difficult to describe the full range of his themes or the evolution of his style, but the available work suggests he builds tension between everyday experience and images such as warehouses, unmanned places and pollen, in a restrained language attentive to rhythm, and that he has some influence in New Zealand and Australian English-language poetry.