Lindsay Rabbitt
Author
Lindsay Rabbitt was born in Invercargill, Aotearoa New Zealand’s southernmost city, in 1950, and raised under the big skies of Central Otago, home district of his mother’s maternal people.
As a young man he trained as a hand and machine typographer and worked for newspapers and commercial printing houses. In the 1980s he purchased a Wellington typesetting and graphic design business. Renaming it Voice Press, he published poetry and short fiction. He reinvented himself as a journalist in the 1990s, working as a reporter/sub-editor for the Kapiti Observer, later writing (freelance) artist profiles, radio and book reviews for the NZ Listener. He occasionally writes book reviews for Landfall Review Online. He has lived on the Kapiti Coast for almost three decades and performs his poems with the song and spoken word troupe Waiata & the Word.
2024 – Poems & Images, Lasavia Publishing
Poetry
upagainstit, Voice Press, 1983. The poem a Hockney pool published in Landfall 146; letter from holloway road selected by editors Gregory O’Brien & Louise St John for the anthology Big Weather, Poems of Wellington, first published by Mallinson & Rendel Publishers Ltd, 2000; revised edition published by Penguin Random House New Zealand, 2018.
ON THE LINE (with drawings by Jane Pountney) Voice Press, 1985. The segment beginning music sounds published in the NZ Listener.
thewayofit (with drawings by Jane Pountney) Black Robin Press, 1988. The poem a way was integrated into the multi-panelled charcoal work entitled Towards A Landscape by Jane Pountney, first exhibited at the Southern Cross Gallery (aka the Gregory Flint Gallery), Wellington, then at the Christina Barton-curated group show After McCahon at Auckland City Gallery in 1988; shifting points was selected by editor Jenny Bornholdt for the anthology Short Poems of New Zealand, Victoria University Press, 2018.
SET PIECE, Hutcheson Bowman & Stewart (printers), 1988. Produced as a type catalogue.
Prayers for the Living & the Dead (with drawings by Bodhi Vincent), Voice Press, 2021. The poems Day of the Dead, The Beats, Nano Sleeps, Bob & Hello published in the NZ Listener; Delivery & Hush Puppies in Landfall; Flowers in Poetry New Zealand Poetry Yearbook, Helen 1962-2012 in the Australian online literary magazine Cordite.
Prose
These Lives I Have Buried, Four Winds Press, 2004, as part of the Lloyd Jones-edited Montana Estates Essay series.
Exhibitions
BODY SHAPE, photo/poem, Alexandra Public Library, 1990. The poem a gain from thewayofit was integrated with family photos for the multi-panelled work. It was redesigned for Landfall 178; the title photo appeared on the magazine’s cover.
SET PIECE, silkscreen prints, BAM, Wellington Public Library, 1996.
Album
This ‘I’, Waiata and the Word, 2011.