STEAD, C.K.

born Oct. 17, 1932, Auckland, N.Z. in full Christian Karlson Stead poet and novelist who gained an international reputation as a critic with The New Poetic: Yeats to Eliot (1964), which became a standard work on modernist poetry. Stead studied at the University of Auckland (B.A., 1954; M.A., 1955) and the University of Bristol, England (Ph.D., 1961). From 1959 to 1986 he taught at the University of Auckland, becoming a full professor in 1968. His first book of poetry, Whether the Will Is Free: Poems 195462, was published in 1964. In his second collection, Crossing the Bar (1972), he was moved by the Vietnam War to protest against the inhumanity and irresponsibility of people in power. His later poetry collections include Quesada: Poems 19721974 (1975), Paris (1984), Between (1988), Voices (1990), and Straw into Gold: Poems New and Selected (1997). Stead's first novel, Smith's Dream (1971), is a disturbing fantasy set in a fascist New Zealand of the future; it was the basis of a 1977 film, Sleeping Dogs. His later novels include All Visitors Ashore (1984), The Death of the Body (1986), Sister Hollywood (1989), The End of the Century at the End of the World (1992), and Villa Vittoria (1997). Stead's critical works, in addition to The New Poetic, include In the Glass Case: Essays on New Zealand Literature (1981) and Answering to the Language (1989), essays on modern writers. In 1994 Stead edited The Faber Book of Contemporary South Pacific Stories.