Upcoming Event (London): My father prayed in Croatian

On the 18th of April David will be speaking at the New Zealand High Commission in London. Tickets (free) are available here. Press release reproduced below.

Istros Books and the British Croatian Society present an evening with poet David Howard:

The inspiration behind David's cycle of poems, Mate, is the history of Dalmatian immigrants to NZ in the early 20th century, who were mostly employed digging kauri gum for the roads in the North Island. Many of them ended up marrying Māori women and the name given to them, and their descendants, is 'Tarara".

The NZ poet David Howard wrote the poetic cycle 'Mate' based on this subject following on from a residency at the Writers’ House in Pazin, Croatia (where he now lives). Following receipt of a Creative New Zealand Resilience Grant, he was supported by the Dalmatian Cultural Society. The work's main critical influences are the masters and doctoral theses of Senka Bozic-Vrbancic, the latter expanded into Tarara: Croats and Māori in New Zealand: memory, belonging, identity (Otago University Press, 2008).

Rāwaho: The Completed Poems reviewed in Takahē Magazine

Rāwaho: The Completed Poems has been reviewed in the April 2023 edition of Takahē Magazine. Reviewer, Vaughan Rapatahana, writes:

“This man treats his poems and their respective heritages lovingly, even religiously, for there is a fluent reverence to his themes throughout. He is a curator of his craft, a kingmaker of koan.”

The April 2023 edition of Takahē Magazine can be found here. Links to other reviews of David’s work can be found here.

Rāwaho: The Completed Poems reviewed in Landfall Review Online

Rāwaho: The Completed Poems has been reviewed in Landfall Review Online. Reviewer, Lindsay Rabbitt, writes:

“To read Howard is to engage with alert and dynamic language, always in movement, in stanza drops, across columns, zig-zagging down the page. The first thing I got as I attended to these pages was the music, the mercurial, shapeshifting nature of the text.... Howard’s a fine poet, inspiring even, and a delight to read, his book alive with literary and cultural echoes.”

The rest of the review can be found here. Links to other reviews of David’s work can be found here.

David Howard at the Calibre Literary Festival

David will explore Rāwaho: The Completed Poems with short story writer Jana Prević Finderle on Friday 21 April during the Calibre Literary Festival in Croatia.