AustLit

Richard Packer, poet, playwright and journalist, was educated in New Zealand at New Plymouth Boys High School and attended Ardmore Training College briefly. He worked as a journalist for newspapers in Wellington and Christchurch before moving to Melbourne, Australia in 1966. He then worked in advertising and remained in Australia apart from travel in Europe and visits to New Zealand.

Packer was a protege of the Wellington poet Louis Johnson and was one of three poets who caused a controversy around the 1964 issue of the New Zealand Poetry Yearbook. His only New Zealand book is Prince of the Plague Country (1964). Packer was a follower of the mystical Subud movement in Indonesia, and he described himself as 'an existentialist with a religious bias'. He also showed some influence of G. I. Gurdjieff and P. D. Ouspensky.

(Source: Adapted from The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature ed. Roger Robinson and Nelson Wattie (1998): 427)