The elephant– Kendrick Smithyman (21/5/95)
does not forget.
Do not forget
the elephant.
1922(9 October) William Kendrick Smithyman born in Te Kopuru, a small logging town on the Wairoa River near Dargaville; his parents looked after the local Old People’s Home.
1930sThe Smithyman family moves to Auckland; Kendrick attends Point Chevalier Primary School and Seddon Memorial Technical College.
1940-41Attends Auckland Teacher’s College (Teacher’s Certificate), and Auckland University College (did not graduate).
1941-42Military service in the NZ Artillery.
1942-45Service in the NZ Air Force.
1944Begins to contribute regularly to literary periodicals in New Zealand and Australia, as well as (occasionally) the UK and USA.
1945Writes the sequence “Considerations of Norfolk Island” (subsequently included in the 1951 edition of Allen Curnow’s Book of NZ Verse) whilst stationed there.
1946-63Works as a Primary and Intermediate School teacher, specialising in Special Needs children (Kowhai and Belmont Intermediate Schools).
1946Marries the poet Mary Stanley. They have three sons: Christopher, Stephen and Gerard.
1946Publication of Seven Sonnets (Auckland: Pelorus Press).
1949-57Literary Editor of Here & Now.
1950Publication of The Blind Mountain and Other Poems (Christchurch: Caxton).
1955Publication of The Gay Trapeze (Wellington: Handcraft Press).
1957Publication of The Night Shift: Poems on Aspects of Love, by James K. Baxter, Charles Doyle, Louis Johnson & Kendrick Smithyman (Wellington: Capricorn Press).
1962Publication of Inheritance (Hamilton: Paul’s Book Arcade).
1962-63Publishes four articles on NZ Poetry in Mate (8-11); having been refused leave from the Education Department to turn these into a book, he resigns instead.
1963Appointed Tutor in English at the University of Auckland.
1965Publication of A Way of Saying: A Study of New Zealand Poetry (Auckland & London: Collins).
1966-87Senior Tutor in the Auckland University English Department.
1968Publication of Flying to Palmerston (Christchurch: Auckland University & Oxford University Press).
1969Appointed Visiting Fellow in Commonwealth Literature at the University of Leeds.
1970Compiles Journal 69, an account of his travels in England and North America.
1971Edits William Satchell’s The Land of the Lost [1902] (Auckland: AUP & OUP).
1972Publication of Earthquake Weather (Auckland: AUP & OUP).
1974Publication of The Seal in the Dolphin Pool (Auckland: AUP & OUP).
1978Publication of Dwarf with a Billiard Cue (Auckland: AUP & OUP).
1980Mary Stanley dies.
1981Marries fellow English Department tutor Margaret Edgcumbe.
1981-82Works on Festives People Places Pictures Book (October 1981-October 1982), an account of his second visit to Canada.
1983-84Works on Imperial Vistas Family Fictions (published 2002).
1985Edits William Satchell’s The Toll of the Bush [1905] (Auckland: AUP & OUP).
1985Publication of Stories About Wooden Keyboards (Auckland: AUP & OUP).
1986Honorary Doctorate from the University of Auckland.
1987Publication of Are You Going to the Pictures? (Auckland: AUP).
1987Edits Greville Texidor’s selected stories, In Fifteen Minutes You Can Say a Lot (Wellington: Victoria University Press).
1987Retires from the Auckland English Department.
1989Publication of Selected Poems, ed. Peter Simpson (Auckland: AUP).
1990Awarded an OBE.
1992Publication of Auto/Biographies (Auckland: AUP).
1993Finishes work on Versions from Italian: Quasimodo / Campana to Montale.
1995(28 December) dies at North Shore Hospital, Auckland, after being taken ill at his home in Northcote.
1996Publication of Tomarata (Tamaki: Holloway Press), designed by Alan Loney, with an afterword by Peter Simpson.
1997Publication of Atua Wera (Auckland: AUP).
2002Publication of Last Poems (Tamaki: Holloway Press), designed by Tara McLeod, with an afterword by Peter Simpson.
2002Publication of Imperial Vistas Family Fictions (Auckland: AUP).
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