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David Mitchell (New Zealand poet)

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David Mitchell
Born(1940-01-10)10 January 1940
Wellington, New Zealand
Died21 June 2011(2011-06-21) (aged 71)
Sydney, Australia
Occupations
  • Poet
  • teacher
Notable workPipe Dreams in Ponsonby (1972)
Spouse
Elsebeth Nielsen
​
(after 1963)​
Children2

David Mitchell (10 January 1940 – 21 June 2011) was a New Zealand poet, teacher and cricketer. In the 1960s and 1970s he was a well-known performance poet in New Zealand, and in 1980 he founded the weekly event "Poetry Live" which continues to run in Auckland as of 2021. His iconic poetry collection Pipe Dreams in Ponsonby (1972) sold well and was a critical success, and his poems have been included in several New Zealand anthologies and journals.[1] A collection of his poems titled Steal Away Boy: Selected Poems of David Mitchell was published in 2010, shortly before his death.[2]

Early life

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Mitchell was born in Wellington in 1940. He was the son of David Eric Mitchell, a deckhand and former stoker from Sydney, and Rossetta Cousins, a Scottish domestic servant.[2] His father died when he was 13, shortly before he started at Wellington College.[2] His first published poem was in the College's annual magazine, The Wellingtonian.[1] He was fond of sport as a teenager and was named as one of five promising schoolboy cricketers by New Zealand cricket captain John Richard Reid.[1][2]

Mitchell graduated from Wellington Teachers' Training College in 1960 and taught his probationary year at Upper Hutt School. He also studied at Victoria University of Wellington around this time but did not complete a degree. In January 1962, he travelled to Europe, and returned to Wellington in 1964.[1][2]

Literary career

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At least three of Mitchell's poems had already been published by the time he left for Europe in early 1962, including "poem for my unborn son" and "Magpies" in the New Zealand Listener.[2] He performed regular poetry readings both in Europe and on his return to New Zealand at venues like Barry Lett Galleries. He and his wife moved to Sydney in 1965 and from there to Auckland in 1966; for the rest of his life he moved between New Zealand and Australia.[2]

In 1972, Mitchell's only full-length collection of poems, Pipe Dreams in Ponsonby, was published by Stephen Chan.[3][4] It received a 'Commended' award in the first Commonwealth Poetry Prize. Chan wrote of the book that "it was a huge critical success almost immediately, but it lost money copiously".[5] The book had ink drawings by New Zealand artist Pat Hanly, who was a friend of Mitchell's.[5] A second edition was published by Caveman Press in 1975,[6] with the support of a grant from the New Zealand State Literary Fund. David Eggleton, writing in the New Zealand Listener, called Pipe Dreams in Ponsonby "one of the best-known and bestselling poetry books [in New Zealand] of the early 1970s, a collection that seemed to capture or encapsulate a particular political and cultural moment".[7] Journalist Hamesh Wyatt said it "was bought and read by people who did not usually buy or read poetry".[8]

In 1975, Mitchell received the Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship, which allowed him to spend time working in Menton, France in 1976.[9] Although he wrote a number of poems during his time in Menton,[2] the fellowship did not result in a further collection.[1][7] Some of his new poems were published in 15 Contemporary New Zealand Poets (1980), edited by Alistair Paterson,[10] and Poetry New Zealand (vol 5, 1982), edited by Frank McKay.[11]

In 1980, Mitchell founded the weekly event "Poetry Live" in Auckland.[12][1][7] It is still running (as of 2023)[13][14] and is New Zealand's longest-running open mic event.[15] Mitchell's friend and fellow poet Iain Sharp later said: "[Mitchell] told me once that he was embarrassed about not producing a new book after he returned from being the 1976 Katherine Mansfield Fellow in Menton. Setting up Poetry Live was his alternative — a way of giving something back to local literature."[16]

In 2002, Mitchell graduated from the Victoria University of Wellington with a Bachelor of Arts.[1][17] He had resumed his studies in the early 1980s but due to health and financial issues the degree took time to complete.[2]

Mitchell was a keen cricketer and played for the Grafton United Cricket Club until 2002.[1] He was a contributor to the anthology A Tingling Catch: A Century of NZ Cricket Poems 1864–2009 published by Mark Pirie.[18] Reviewer Terry Locke said that Mitchell's poem "gasometer/ponsonby" was "probably my favourite poem in the book", and noted that Mitchell was "the one person who has both written a poem about cricket in this book and has had a poem written about him, i.e. Ron Riddell's "Poet & Cricketer"".[19]

In April 2010, Steal Away Boy: Selected Poems of David Mitchell was published by the Auckland University Press, edited by Martin Edmond and Nigel Roberts.[2] Mitchell is described in the book's description as "one of New Zealand’s great poetic characters from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s: poet, lover, political activist, cricketer, impresario, mysterium and, to some, an all-round pain in the arse".[2] The book was listed as one of the New Zealand Listener Top 100 Books of 2010.[2] The book was praised by critics: Hamesh Wyatt, reviewing the collection for the Otago Daily Times, called the book "a vivid and frequently gorgeous reminder that David Mitchell is a talented poet",[8] while Paula Green in the NZ Herald noted that his poems were "written to be performed with a playful use of word antics and repetition, but they work on the page. They are fresh (still), fluid and full of ease."[20]

Personal life

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While Mitchell was in London in 1963, he met 18-year-old Elsebeth Nielsen, a Danish au pair who later became a fashion model. They married that August, after Nielsen became pregnant, and had a daughter Sara in March 1964. The marriage was a difficult one and she left him in December 1966 and returned to Denmark for a year and a half. There were two more attempts at reconciliation before they separated for good around 1969.[2][21] Mitchell later had another daughter, Genevieve.[22]

References

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  1. ^ a b c d e f g h Pirie, Mark (Winter 2011). "Obituary: David Mitchell". Poetry Notes: Quarterly Newsletter of PANZA. Vol. 2, no. 2. p. 3. Retrieved 24 October 2020.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Mitchell, David (April 2010). Edmond, Martin; Roberts, Nigel (eds.). Steal Away Boy: Selected Poems of David Mitchell. Auckland, New Zealand: Auckland University Press. ISBN 978-1-8694-0459-8. Retrieved 23 October 2020.
  3. ^ Mitchell, David (1972). Pipe Dreams in Ponsonby (1st ed.). Auckland, New Zealand: S. Chan for the Association of Orientally Flavoured Syndics.
  4. ^ Locke, Terry (2010). "Review: Steal Away Boy: Selected poems of David Mitchell" (PDF). English in Aotearoa. 70: 80. Retrieved 23 October 2020.
  5. ^ a b Chan, Stephen (2009). "Publishing Pipe Dreams in Ponsonby". New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre. London. Retrieved 23 October 2020.
  6. ^ Mitchell, David (1975). Pipe Dreams in Ponsonby (2nd ed.). Dunedin, New Zealand: Caveman Press.
  7. ^ a b c Eggleton, David (18 June 2020). "Angel-headed hipster". New Zealand Listener. Archived from the original on 21 April 2020. Retrieved 23 October 2020.
  8. ^ a b Wyatt, Hamesh (10 April 2010). "Review special: Poetry round-up". Otago Daily Times. Retrieved 22 November 2020.
  9. ^ "Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship". The Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi. The Arts Foundation. Retrieved 23 October 2020.
  10. ^ Simpson, Peter (11 October 1980). "The Open Alternative". The Press. p. 17. Retrieved 3 May 2023.
  11. ^ Simpson, Peter (9 October 1982). "A spectrum of poetry". The Press. p. 16. Retrieved 3 May 2023.
  12. ^ Price, Felicity (29 May 1980). "Reporter's diary". The Press. p. 2. Retrieved 3 May 2023.
  13. ^ "Regular NZ Poetry Events". New Zealand Poetry Society. Archived from the original on 8 October 2020. Retrieved 24 October 2020.
  14. ^ "HOME". PoetryLive NZ. Retrieved 3 May 2023.
  15. ^ "Other Events – Spoken Word Aotearoa". New Zealand Poetry Slam. Archived from the original on 24 October 2020.
  16. ^ Sharp, Iain (2000). "Letter to Timothy Sugden". New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre. Auckland. Retrieved 9 November 2020.
  17. ^ "Roll of graduates". Victoria University of Wellington. Retrieved 31 October 2020.
  18. ^ Pirie, Mark, ed. (September 2010). A Tingling Catch: A Century of NZ Cricket Poems 1864–2009. Wellington, New Zealand: Headworx. ISBN 978-0-4731-6872-8. Retrieved 24 October 2020.
  19. ^ Locke, Terry (2011). "Book review: "A Tingling Catch": A century of NZ cricket poems 1864–2009" (PDF). English in Aotearoa. 73: 62. Retrieved 24 October 2020.
  20. ^ Green, Paula (25 August 2010). "Poetry Reviews: Inventive trio of wordsmiths". NZ Herald. Retrieved 22 November 2020.
  21. ^ Nielsen, Elsebeth. "At the Coalface: My Life with the Poet David Mitchell". New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre. Retrieved 8 November 2020.
  22. ^ McClean, Genevieve (2010). "Don't breathe a word: Dave Mitchell's poetry and films". New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre. Auckland. Retrieved 16 November 2020.
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