Bill Manhire was born in Invercargill in 1946 and educated at the Universities of Otago and London. For many years he taught at Victoria University, where he founded the International Institute of Modern Letters, home to New Zealand's leading creative writing programme, and is now Emeritus Professor of English and Creative Writing. In 1997 he was made New Zealand's inaugural Poet Laureate. In 2005 he was appointed a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit and named an Arts Foundation of New Zealand Laureate, and in 2018 an Arts Foundation of New Zealand Icon. He holds an honorary Doctorate of Literature from the University of Otago and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand. The most recent of Bill's many books of poems are Selected Poems (2012) and Some Things to Place in a Coffin (2017).