// Workers AI · dad joke modeWho's Niel Wright? Wright person for the job.

Frank William Nielsen "Niel" Wright (30 September 1933 – 28 November 2024) was a New Zealand poet, literary critic, bibliographer, publisher, and cultural and political commentator. His major piece of work is his epic poem The Alexandrians, mostly self published in 120 books between 1961 and 2007 and totaling some 36,000 lines. The early editions were published by Pegasus Press, Christchurch. He has since self published 1045 post-Alexandrian poems totaling 8331 lines, of which 681 are triolets. He has also published extensive notes to The Alexandrians.

Life

Born in Sydenham Christchurch of mixed French, Scandinavian and English ancestry. His first school was Elmwood in Merivale, his second St Albans. He then attended Christchurch Boys' High School.

Wright moved to Wellington in 1953, at first off and on, then permanently from the 1960s. He attended Victoria University of Wellington, earning a BA and MA (Hons) in English, followed by a PhD on Beowulf. His career was spent in the New Zealand public service.

He was married with one son, one daughter and four grandchildren. He lived in Wellington.

Wright died on 28 November 2024, at the age of 91.

Literary output

Wright was a prolific author and publisher of his work, he has over 1000 entries listed in the National Library of New Zealand. Almost all are self-published under his imprints Cultural and Political Booklets and Original Books, Wellington.

As a publisher his Original Books list includes Ruth Gilbert (poet), M L Nicholls, Michael O'Leary (writer), Mark Pirie, Barry Morrall, Dennis List, Cameron La Follette (USA), Harry Ricketts, Linzy Forbes, Ivy Gibbs, R G Park, John Pine Snadden and Heine translations by John Liddell Kelly.

Niel Wright set up the Poetry Archive Charitable Trust with Michael O’Leary a fellow trustee (who came up with the idea for the Poetry Archive of New Zealand Aotearoa in 1999) and received public funding for the Winter Readings poetry series at The City Gallery in Wellington from 2006-2008. Niel wrote a history of PANZA, The Early History of the Poetry Archive of New Zealand Aotearoa, 2010. He ran the Poetry Archive of New Zealand Aotearoa from his home in 2010 until his death.

His critical writings survey New Zealand poetry from 1898 on, covering mainly Georgian but also a few earlier and later writers. From 1985, he has focused on the Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists, and since 2002, increasingly on Shakespeare. His major books are Shakespeare's Ongoing Composition (2008) and Argybargy and the Big D (2009).

He has published essays on numerous New Zealand writers including Maude Ruby Basham (Aunt Daisy), James K. Baxter, George Bouzaid, Alan Claudius Brassington, Alan Brunton, Charles Brasch, Alfred Edward Caddick, Alex Calder, Alistair Te Ariki Campbell, Ronald Brian Castle, R. E. Coury, Charles Doyle, Kate Gerard, Patricia Godsiff, C. W. Grace, Arnold Grierson Lamont Cork, D'Arcy Cresswell, Peter Crisp, Allen Curnow, Eileen Duggan, E. L. Eyre, Bernard Gadd, Michele Leggott, Arthur Frederick Thomas Chorlton, Leigh Davis, A. R. D. Fairburn, Gerald Fitzgerald, Patricia Fry, Ruth Gilbert, Denis Glover, Alexander Connell Hanlon, Robin Hyde, Noel Farr Hoggard, Louis Johnson, John Liddell Kelly, Dennis List, Iain Lonie, Bill Manhire, Katherine Mansfield, Charles Allan Marris, Frank McKay, Philip Mincher, Barry Mitcalfe, Geoffrey Potocki de Montalk, Peter Munz, Walter Edward Murphy, Marjory Lydia Nicholls, Esma North, Victor O'Leary, W. H. Oliver, Vincent O'Sullivan, Charles Stuart Perry, Mark Pirie, Mary E. Richmond, Harry Ricketts, Betty Riddell, J. H. E.Schroder, Rosemary Seymour, Kendrick Smithyman, Charles Spear, C. K. Stead, John Pine Snadden, J. E. Weir, Karl Wolfskehl and the Australian writer Pamela Travers.

Among the British authors he has written on are Rupert Brooke, Robert Browning, R. G. Collingwood, Frances Cornford, William Davenant, Richard Edwardes, T. S. Eliot, John Maxwell Edmonds, George Rostrevor Hamilton, Thomas Hardy, John Marston, Thomas Middleton, John Milton, Anthony Munday, Wilfred Owen, George Peele, Geoffrey Pollett, William Rowley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Anthony Thwaite, Alfred, Lord Tennyson and William Wordsworth. He has also written on Goethe.

Among the New Zealand bibliographers and critics he has written on are Peter Alcock, Rowan Gibbs, Don McKenzie and Joan Stevens. He has published bibliographies of Ivan Bootham, Jeremy Commons, Mark Pirie and Michael O'Leary.

Wright's published works include plays, filmscripts, novels, short stories and two verse novellas.

His earliest plays date from the 1950s. From 1984 all his plays have been written in verse. They include Orestes in Phthia, Apollonius at Rome and Women of Sparta. He has also written three filmscripts: Mysterious Eve, Wolf's Gorge, or Operation Fullscale, and Across the Ningthi. His novels include Underprivileged Lovers, Strangers in the Blood, Caisson, and The Last Time I Saw Turfit. His latest is Weston Burley's Business in Great Waters (2007). He has also written The Fall of the Modern West, a book on the philosophy of history.

He has published two major works of literary autobiography: Brilliantly Wright (1989) and Being, Obsession and Besetment (2007).

In 1960, Wright had a poetry collection, The Imaginings of the Heart, published by The Chiron Press in Kansas, USA.

In 2002, Niel Wright’s verse novella The Sun Wheel was set to music by Ivan Bootham and performed before the opera The Death of Venus, of which Jeremy Commons was co-librettist. Bootham also previously set to music Niel’s Three Lejjoon Poems (2000), a short song cycle and read his poetry on YouTube.

In 2004, Earl of Seacliff Art Workshop reprinted his collection, Only A Bullet Will Stop Me Now.

Wright's The Pop Artist's Garland: Selected Poems 1952–2009, drawing on his epic poem The Alexandrians as well as his post-Alexandrian work was published by HeadworX and edited by Mark Pirie.

Reviews and critical studies

• James Bertram, "The Last Maker", New Zealand Listener, 12 August 1978, p. 71
• Peter Dronke, Reviews, Landfall, September 1964, pp. 277–280
• John Sebastian Hales, An introductory essay: Niel Wright and his epic, Wellington (author), 1976.
• Chris Hilliard,"Mad by Auckland Standards", The Pander 3, Autumn 1998, Auckland
• Robert Johnson, "Extracts from a growing epic", Palmerston North Evening Standard, 12 September 1980
• Catherine Robertson, "The Perverse Poet", The Dominion Post "Indulgence" magazine, 29 December 2007, p. 3
• Joe Wylie, Review, Takahe 54, 2005
• Nelson Wattie, Poetry Archive opening and book launch, Poetry Notes, Winter 2010, vol. 1, no. 2, p.3.
• Patricia Prime, Review, Takahe 71, 2010, pp. 72-73.
• Hamesh Wyatt, Review, Otago Daily Times, 14 August 2010, p. 49.
• Iain Sharp, "Renewing the Prosody", Landfall 221, May 2011, pp. 187-190.
• In memory of Niel Wright 1933-2024, Poetry Archive of New Zealand Aotearoa https://poetryarchivenz.wordpress.com/2026/05/21/in-memory-of-niel-wright-1933-2024/