An officer and a firebrand

I enjoyed Denis Glover’s company a few times in the early 60s when I lived at Pukerua Bay, with him just down the road at Paekākāriki. I recall him running out of booze but suddenly remembering a half-bottle of whisky he’d hidden from his partner in a scooped-out pumpkin. I took to him immediately.

Although I was barely out of nappies as a poet, he treated me warmly. Reading these brilliantly entertaining letters (a mini-autobiography) takes us back to a time when,