John Barr (poet)

John Barr of Craigilee (1809-1889) was a Scottish-New Zealand poet.

Biography

Born in Paisley, Scotland in 1809, Barr moved to Otago in 1852, and farmed a property at Halfway Bush. ["Writers in Residence", by Jenny Robin Jones, Auckland University Press, 2004 ] In 1857 he moved with his wife Mary and their four children to Balclutha, and established a farm which he called Craigilee. He was the founder of the New Zealand Robert Burns Society. ["Anthology of New Zealand Poetry in English, Oxford University Press, 1997.] In his time, he was considered the "Laureate of Otago province", of which he wrote, in Lowland Scots:

:"There's nae place like Otago yet,":"There's nae wee beggar weans,":"Or auld men shivering at our doors":"To beg for scraps or banes"

Allen Curnow described his writing as "this Scots-colonial "parritch"... watery gruel at the best."

References

* Curnow, Allen (ed) "The Penguin Book of New Zealand Verse"