A. R. D. Fairburn, 1904–1957

Abstract

A. R. D. (Rex) Fairburn was one of the most influential poets and independent thinkers of 1930s, 40s and 50s New Zealand. He engaged fiercely with the political, social and economic issues of his day, often using sharply rendered parody and satire to attack points of view with which he disagreed. He was a central part of the group of writers sometimes referred to as the ‘Phoenix generation’. He contributed to all of the significant literary and cultural magazines of his day, from Phoenix (Auckland) to the New Zealand Listener, often taking his place among their editorial staff. While his political beliefs were sometimes at odds with those of his collaborators, and his overtly physical masculinity and unconventional lifestyle tended to alienate the more conventional sectors of society, his delight in argument for argument’s sake and his capacities as a poet overrode any reservations which might have arisen about his place in the literary and cultural life of the nation. Rex Fairburn was born in Auckland on 2 February 1904. His paternal ancestor William Thomas Fairburn, a lay-preacher with the Church Missionary Society, arrived in the far north of New Zealand in 1819, two decades before the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi and the beginning of organised settlement by the British. William’s son Edwin, born in 1827, became a land surveyor, one of the crucial occupations of colonisation, and is credited with writing New Zealand’s first novel, an inchoate vision of the future entitled The Ships of Tarshish (1867). His son Arthur, the poet’s father, was more conventional, spending his working life as a clerk and then accountant for a sugar manufacturer and in his leisure hours cultivated a reputation as a music critic. Arthur married Teresa Harland in 1902; she was a musician of some talent, the daughter of recent immigrants from the north of England, and possessed of increasingly nonconformist religious beliefs. Rex was their first child. He was followed by two brothers, Geoffrey in 1905 and Thayer in 1909. A quiet child, Fairburn grew into a tall and athletic youth with a predilection for sport, particularly tennis and golf, and for roaming the hills of the Auckland isthmus and the fringes of its attendant harbours, Waitemata and Manukau. The region’s forests, farmlands and beaches form a backdrop for much of Fairburn’s poetic output, poetry which is also imbued with the energetic physicality of the outdoor life he loved. He was as much at home swimming in the sea as walking the land, and until his untimely death was never happier