Event Photos (London): My Father Prayed in Croatian

On the 18th of April David spoke at the New Zealand High Commission in London. The event was chaired by Roy Cross, who writes:

“The week before last, I had the great pleasure of chairing a reading by David Howard, a New Zealand poet who should be much better known in the UK. David has written a wonderful sequence of poems, Mate (which is a Dalmatian name, pronounced Maat-eh, not a greeting!), about the encounter between Dalmatian immigrants to Aotearoa and the local Māori people at the turn of the century. Each poem in the sequence is told from the perspective of a different member of the Petricevich family.”

A PDF of the complete sequence with explanatory notes can be found on Roy’s site here, or as a direct download here. Below, some photographs from the event.

Roy Cross (left), David Howard (right)

David Howard speaks at the New Zealand High Commission (London)

David Howard (left), Davor Ljubanovic (centre), Roy Cross (right)

Christina Pribićević-Zorić (far left), Celia Hawkesworth (left), David Howard (right), Roy Cross (far right)

(Images supplied by Istros Books)

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.