Michael Oliver Johnson (born 1947)^[1] is a New Zealand author and creative writing teacher. He has written thirteen novels, eleven books of poetry, several short stories featured in critically acclaimed anthologies, and three children's books. Johnson has been awarded two literary fellowships in New Zealand, one with the University of Canterbury, and one with the University of Auckland.^[2] His novel Dumb Show won the Buckland Memorial Literary Award for fiction in 1997.^[1] He is also a founder of Lasavia Publishing Ltd, a publishing house created in Waiheke Island, New Zealand.

Johnson's prose contains elements of magic realism and science fiction.^[1][2]

Early life

Johnson grew up in Hinds, a small, rural town about 12 miles south of Ashburton, New Zealand. The rugged, sparsely populated landscape of his childhood is a feature in his novel Dumb Show.^[1] He attended the University of Canterbury, earning a degree in Political Science in 1971. He travelled around Europe and North Africa before returning to New Zealand in the late 1970s, when he began to focus on his writing.^[1]

Career

Johnson's writing career was launched with his first book of poetry, The Palanquin Ropes, which co-won the John Cowie Reid Memorial Competition in 1981.^[3] This prestigious literary award has been won by writers such as Alistair Paterson and Cilla McQueen.^[4] In 1986, Johnson's first novel, Lear – The Shakespeare Company Plays Lear at Babylon, was shortlisted for the New Zealand Book Awards.^[1]

Johnson has been the recipient of a number of awards and creative writing grants from 1985 to 2002. To date, he has written eight novels, two collections of shorter fiction, one non-fiction, one children's title and six poetry collections, in addition to having various works selected for literary anthologies.

Mike Johnson's teaching career spans over twenty years. Since the late 80s, he has taught creative writing in a variety of institutions and circumstances, at both undergraduate and graduate level. From 2008 to 2020, he taught a Master of Creative Writing course at the Auckland University of Technology (AUT).^[5] In addition, he is involved in a publishing company, Lasavia Publishing Ltd, in partnership with his wife, Leila Lees.^[6]

Critical reception

Because of its mixed genre nature, Johnson's work is not considered a part of mainstream New Zealand literature. His novels and poetry have, however, received a positive response from the critics.

Dr David Dowling, writing in the prestigious Landfall magazine on Johnson's first novel, Lear, comments: ‘Johnson makes an original contribution to the literature of disaster, and certainly to the nation's literature that still struggles beneath the mantle of social realism; he does it by the sheer intensity of his poetic vision, combined with an adroit metafictional sense ... In this fallen world, does falling matter? Johnson’s novel is an exuberant, artful meditation on this question.’^[7]

Commenting on his 2011 novel, Travesty, Jodie Dalgleish writes, ‘(Johnson) has achieved a kind of ‘worldmaking’ [...] that confirms his position as one of New Zealand's most important fiction writers.'^[8]

Siobhan Harvey, prominent poet and critic, writes about Johnson's last book of poetry, To Beatrice Where We Cross the Line, 'A skilled practitioner at whatever literary craft he turns his hand to...Johnson is a writer at one with the word, its power, its airy finesses and everyday solidities, its resourcefulness, its craft.'^[9]

Writing in the New Zealand Herald on Johnson's critically well-received English to English translations of the Dang Dynasty poet, Li He (The Vertical Harp – the selected poems of Li He) writer and critic Iain Sharp wrote: ‘Mike Johnson is the most underrated of all living New Zealand authors. Sometimes gothic, sometimes lyrical, sometimes both at once, his output over the past three decades has been extraordinary. Yet much of his fiction and most of his poetry has slipped by, barely reviewed...'^[10]

Following the successful reception of his dystopian fiction novel Driftdead, in December 2021, Johnson was featured in North & South Magazine. Paul Little described the book as, 'a door-stopping piece of dystopian fiction whose large and colourful cast includes the zombie-like driftdead of the title.'^[11]

Well known, contemporary writer, Witi Ihimaera, has described Johnson as 'One of the most innovative, original and fearless writers I know.'^[1]

Literary works

Awards and honours

• 1981 – Co winner of the John Cowie Reid Memorial Competition for a long poem or sequence of poems, with The Palanquin Ropes
• 1982 – Poetry Prize: Te Awamutu Festival of the Arts
• 1986 – Lear – The Shakespeare Company Plays Lear At Babylon shortlisted for New Zealand Book Awards
• 1987 – University of Canterbury Literary Fellowship (Writer in Residence)
• 1997 – Buckland Memorial Literary Award for the novel Dumb Show
• 1999 – Francis Keane Award for best short story, Magic Strings'’
• 2002 – University of Auckland Literary Fellowship
• 2002 – Nominated for the Sir Julius Vogel Award for the novel Counterpart
• 2006 – Wellington composer Carol Shortis wins the Philip Neil Memorial Prize with a song entitled 'The riddle of her flight' with the lyrics of a poem from Mike Johnson's book Treasure Hunt

References