Black Mountain Poet

Robert Creeley, who helped transform postwar American poetry by making it more conversational and emotionally direct, has in Odessa, Texas. He was 78. Robert Creeley’s association with New Zealand dates from 1976 when he visited at the invitation of the NZ Students’ Art Council and read in the six university cities. In Dunedin he also met Penelope Highton, to whom the poem ‘So There’ is dedicated. They were married in Buffalo, NY in 1977. He taught and read to graduate and undergraduate classes at Auckland University in 1995 as part of a residency. While here he wrote ‘The Dogs of Auckland,’ an eight-part meditation on time and place, memory and death. Creeley’s New Zealand collaborators included painter Max Gimblett and poet and printer Alan Loney.

Robert Creeley: May 21, 1926 – March 30, 2005