the majority was taken from FAIRBURN, Arthur 'Rex' Dugard (with some researched additions)
- 'FAIRBURN, Arthur Rex Dugard', from An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand, edited by A. H. McLintock, originally published in 1966.
- Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 23-Apr-09

Rex Fairburn was born on 2 February 1904 at Auckland, the son of Arthur FAIRBURN (1875-1953), who was music critic on the Auckland Star for many years, and Teresa HARLAND (1872-1959) (they married in 1902)
- 2 of Rex's known brothers were:
20 Aug 1905 - 1999 Geoffrey Earl Fairburn
11 Dec 1909 - 1998 Edward Thayer Fairburn

He was a fourth-generation New Zealander whose great grandfather, a noted missionary, had signed the Treaty of Waitangi.

Fairburn was educated at Parnell School and Auckland Grammar School. His occupations (as distinct from his career, which was poetry) included periods as an insurance clerk, free-lance journalist, relief worker in the depression, radio-script writer, assistant secretary to the Auckland Farmers' Union, university English tutor, and, for several years, a lecturer in the history and the theory of art at the Elam School of Arts.

In Rex Fairburn the mind and the man demand to be described together, and can be, in similar terms. For the poet, like the man, stood out among his fellows by his stature, his athletic vigour, his human warmth, his firm, commanding voice, and his always agreeable presence. Fairburn's tall entry to a room, like his name in the list of contributors to some hopeful new magazine, raised expectations. With his loose, comfortable clothes, his fine clear eyes, and a large cherrywood pipe to gesture with, Fairburn in a room made many friends and seldom an enemy. His argument, though often absurd because wit was tempting, was always enjoyed. He talked as he wrote, indefatigably but not selfishly. Wit and benevolence flowed from him; his mind was fertile and swift with simile and epigram, and in his time scarcely a magazine in New Zealand was launched without some crackling contribution either from the poet or the critic ? as can be seen from the complete bibliography of his work by Olive Johnson. He liked boatbuilding and took pleasure in the use of tools, which he handled always in a manner slightly larger than life. For a time he embraced Social Credit; and he was an enthusiast for compost. He drank cheap local wine with gusto, would ridicule a gourmet, and once remarked of an acquaintance that he had ?a great deal of taste, but very little appetite?.

Except in his last few years (when he was lecturer in the history and theory of art at Auckland University College), Fairburn's occupations were merely his compromise, accepted as cheerfully as possible, with a society that was not yet ready to accommodate his kind. It was as poet that he asked attention, and latterly received it from an audience no longer small and defensive. His early work, influenced by the Georgian poets, was lyrical and romantic, and during a visit to England in the early thirties he was warned by Humbert Wolfe that what he was doing was ?not fashionable?. He had already announced his own rejection of it, however, in the title poem of his first published volume, He Shall Not Rise (London, 1930). The depression of the thirties, during which he did relief work on the roads, coloured his next volume, Dominion (1938), a sequence of poems that bitterly assailed New Zealand society.
A new lyricism here rode well clear of what Fairburn once called the ?imitation goat tracks? left all over the country by versifying followers of Pan, and the colour and warmth of the Auckland land- and sea-scape, which he now acknowledged as his true environment, found expression in a language recognisably his own.

Society and land were themes in Dominion ? themes of local reference. With his next volume (passing over the shared book, Recent Poems), the emphasis shifted to themes of universal reference ? to love and death. In Poems 1929?41 Fairburn selected the best of his work to date, which included Night Song, The Cave, and A Farewell, three of his finest love poems. By allowing the whole of that book to be included 11 years later in Strange Rendezvous (1952), and by publishing in the same year Three Poems (containing his three long works, Dominion, The Voyage, and To a Friend in the Wilderness), Fairburn authorised what will stand for some time as virtually his ?collected poems?. From the whole, To a Friend in the Wilderness stands out as undoubtedly the richest, most satisfactory single example of his work. In it, maturely, he replaced the protesting attitudes of Dominion with a larger acceptance. Society and land now are one; they are ?country?, not New Zealand only but any country, and may not be chosen between.

The poem takes the form of a dialogue with an alter ego (?Old Rebel?) who advocates escape (the sun is on the sea and the fish are biting,| the garden is full, the fruit begins to fall.| For God's sake chuck it, join me and share my crust,| the world well lost. Make life a long week-end). The poet, affectionately, rejects this tempter as he rejects all romanticism. He can praise the wilderness with a richer lyric than can the friend who calls him there (I could be happy, in blue and fortunate weather,| roaming the country that lies between you and the Sun) and can impugn society with surer touch than could the author of Dominion (Doctrines are many and doctors two a penny.| Truth in her time-flight scatters a million fragments, and the paper-chase is endless); but now also he is committed utterly to both (This is my world.| These people are my clansmen, my accomplices. This guilt is my reprieve:| I am alive, and I do not mean to leave|till the game is up, and my hand has lost its power). By this poem Fairburn moved on to his own, unhappily final, poetic maturity and also greatly advanced that process in which New Zealanders are engaged, of taking imaginative and spiritual possession of their land.

Though doubtless they are not for export, Fairburn's satire and horseplay are important in his output, and much valued in New Zealand.
Rare copies of The Sky is a Limpet (A Pollytickle Parrotty) and How to Ride a Bicycle (In Seventeen Lovely Colours), both in typographical collaboration with R. W. LOWRY, are rightly treasured by those who own them. In addition, much light verse, from The Rakehelly Man to the posthumous Poetry Harbinger, exhibits Fairburn's benevolent nature and broad, sane outlook.

In 1931 Fairburn married Jocelyn, daughter of Selwyn MAYS, and had one son and three daughters. He died in Devonport on 25 March 1957 and is buried in the cemetery at Albany, Auckland.

On 21 March 1964 a special ceremony was held at Fairburn's grave, when a monument was unveiled which took the form of a 7 cwt piece of unhewn grey stone, with his name and date of birth and death.

ON-LINE WORKS
In the Younger Land
Odysseus (?Odysseus, the old wanderer?)
All I Have Desired
Odysseus (?I have come back as a stone falls to earth?)
Rhyme of the Dead Self
Disquisition on Death
Winter Night
Empty House
First Things
Dominion
Full Fathom Five
A Farewell
Tapu
The Cave
Wild Love
Walking on My Feet
To A Friend in the Wilderness
The Voyage
Down On My Luck

plus satirical and light verse including:
* The Sky is a Limpet (A Polytickle Parrotty)
* How to Ride a Bicycle (In Seventeen Lovely Colours)
* The Rakehelly Man
* Poetry Harbinger

* I'm Older Than You, Please Listen

another biography on Rex Fairburn


Fairburn?s 1925-1930 Scrapbook
This is one of two scrapbooks in the University of Auckland Library collection containing clippings of Fairburn?s early published articles. The 1925-30 volume also contains poems, quips and visual material by a range of writers and artists who had made an impression on him. Many of the poems are typed out and pasted into the album on top of its original pages (the book was a volume of Australian scenic photographs). There is a strong sense of design in the arrangement of visuals and texts on each page, and some characteristically gleeful juxtapositions of material. Perhaps most interesting is the scope of what Fairburn admired as a young writer looking for models and directions in the literary scene of the 1920s, and what he had to say about his elders and contemporaries. His contributions to the Christchurch Sun here coincide with the literary editorship of that paper by John Schroder who was encouraging and publishing work by a number of young writers, including Fairburn, R.A.K. Mason and Robin Hyde. The clippings of Fairburn?s published articles have been annotated and given bibliographic numbering by Olive Johnson.

The scrapbook contains items by the following authors and artists (numbers in square brackets indicate scanned page):

PHOTOS of Rex

LISTEN to Rex read some of his poems for radio broadcast in the programme 'New Zealand poets' readings', recorded in the 1950s. The poems are 'Full fathom five' , 'A farewell' and 'Walking on my feet'. (3 min 53 sec)