James K. Baxter

James Keir Baxter was a poet, and is a celebrated figure in New Zealand society. Baxter was born in Dunedin to Archibald Baxter and Millicent Brown and grew up near Brighton. He was named after James Keir Hardie, a founder of the British Labour Party. His father had been a conscientious objector during the First World War. His mother had studied at the Presbyterian Ladies' College, Sydney, the University of Sydney and Newnham College. On his first day of school, Baxter burned his hand on a stove and later used this incident to represent the failure of institutional education. As a child he... contrasted the social order represented by his maternal grandfather with the clan mentality of his Scottish father and frequently drew analogies between the Highland clans and the Māori tribes. Baxter, like the comparable Francis Webb in Australia, claims to have begun writing poetry at the age of seven, and it is certain that he accumulated a large body of technically-accomplished work both before and during his teenage years.
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