David Howard

New Zealander David Howard was born in Christchurch, a city that was largely destroyed in a series of earthquakes (2010–11), so he feels like an orphan. He was the UNESCO City of Literature Writer in Residence at Prague in March and April 2016, representing the city of Dunedin, where he has lived since 2003.

©Dean Nixon

David co-founded the journal Takahe (1989) and the Canterbury Poets Collective (1990), both of which are still major forces in New Zealand literature. He spent his professional life as a pyrotechnics supervisor whose clients included Metallica, Janet Jackson, and the All Blacks.

In November 2011 Cold Hub Press published The Incomplete Poems, which includes all of David's poetry from 1976 until 2010. He then received the Robert Burns Fellowship (2013) and the Otago Wallace Residency (2014).

David believes that language is the history of being human; we can all write our own history.

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