Abstract
D’Arcy Cresswell’s reputation is not the one that he coveted. He is not remotely the poet he believed himself to be, and, judged on his verse alone, would long have been forgotten. He remains, however, one of New Zealand literature’s outstanding identities. His value is principally symptomatic, exemplifying in extravagant gestures the signature dilemmas of mid-century provincialism. But the idiosyncratically quotable prose of his two volumes of autobiography exerts a strong fascination in its own right, even as readers inevitably struggle with the questionable attitudes and foibles of its author.
Highlights
Walter D’Arcy Cresswell was born in Christchurch on 22 January 1896, the third child of Walter Joseph and Hannah Cresswell
After briefly attending architecture classes in London, he enlisted in the Middlesex Regiment shortly after the outbreak of World War 1, serving in France, where he was severely wounded
After recuperating in England, he re-enlisted with the New Zealand Royal Engineers, returning to New Zealand with the forces in 1919
Summary
Walter D’Arcy Cresswell was born in Christchurch on 22 January 1896, the third child of Walter Joseph and Hannah Cresswell. Though two longer pieces reflect, diffusely, on the author’s experience of World War 1, his principle themes are the poet’s vocation and his recollections of New Zealand ‘Nature.’ Cresswell believed that English poetry had languished since the time of the Romantics.
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