ARTIST: Sam Hunt
New Zealand's best known poet was born in 1946, at Castor Bay, Auckland. As a child, he was surrounded by poetry and performance: his mother, father and grandfather all contributed, reading poems aloud, or, more often, reciting from memory. His father was a somewhat eccentric barrister who came from a family of actors, troupers and musicians.
For all his adult life, Sam Hunt has followed a commitment to writing and performing his poems. During part of 1975 he was the Robert Burns Fellow at Otago University. In 1983, after receiving a Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council/Air New Zealand travel award, he visited the United States to perform in New York and Washington DC.
In 1985 he was awarded a QSM for his contribution to New Zealand literature and he has been a New Zealand Cultural Ambassador. Sam Hunt has done more than anyone else to popularise poetry in New Zealand.
He has worked extensively throughout New Zealand and Australia, in hotels, rock festivals, theatres, prisons, schools - you name it! - and every few years in London, (Ronnie Scotts), New York and Washington DC...
