Peter Olds

Influences on his poetry include American rock'n'roll, the 1950s beat poetry of Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, and many aspects from the counter-culture of the time such as drugs, sex and depression are regular themes, particularly in his early poetry. The Poet Laureate, David Eggleton argued that Olds' personal vision in his poems is reflected in "life, death, greed, humanity, poverty, gentrification, Methodism, bees, love, spirituality, medication, buses, trains, clapped-out pre-War Fords, and an immaculately restored white Oldsmobile Convertible with pink vinyl hood...echoing Jack Kerouac's On the Road...the beat generation, reaching New Zealand and its 1950s bodgies and widgies, and reaching Peter Olds, too, as he recalled in his 2012 jukebox poem 'Love Me Do/1963'." A friendship with James K. Baxter influenced what has been called the romantic tendency toward "reflective narratives of circumstantial personal experience" in his poetry. Being the son of a Methodist minister, Olds also shared a religious background with Baxter and one commentator has noted that it is "easy to see how such early influences could lead the young Olds to identify with the vatic power of language and poetry’s associated mystique...[and see]... Baxter as a liberating example of the poet-seer’s defiant non-conformity." Victor Billot has said of an early interaction with Baxter, that "a bearded poet-shaman with burning eyes staring at you on a street corner in Dunedin … asking [Olds] to join him on God’s instruction at a backwoods commune" was likely to have made a big impact on the young poet at that time in his life. When his poem At Murdering Beach was published, Olds shared one aspect of his inspiration: I love to go to places of interest where people once lived in pre-European times. I like to imagine what it was like for those who had only a bone and stone technology between themselves and extinction. In the year 2000 & something, Murdering Beach (Whareakeake) is not a bad place for a picnic and a swim. Some surfers find good swells out among the black rocks beyond the cliffs at the ends of the beach.

Poetry Reading at Kaka Point was published in 2006, and In the Dragon Cafe, which features Letter to Hone Tuwhare in 2007. Under the Dundas Street Bridge, previewed as being "personal...the author takes us tripping down alleyways of his own confusion: waterbottle in backpack, notepad in hand, stalking the town like an evangelist on a mission", was released in 2012. In 2014 You fit the description: the selected poems of Peter Olds was published. A review of the book by the publisher included an introduction by Ian Wedde. Taking my Jacket for a Walk, a work completed by Olds in 2017, was translated into Spanish in 2020 by Dr Rogelio Guedea, a "Mexican-born poet, crime novelist and academic", who taught Spanish at the University of Otago where he became familiar with Olds' work. Guedea said that Olds was an important writer whose work deserved to be read more widely. He described Olds as having a "great critical sense of humour...[and was]...wonderful at capturing the absurdity of life". Olds was surprised and pleased with the outcome. Sheep Truck and other poems (2022) is described on the publisher's website as "a collection of 29 new poems by veteran Dunedin poet Peter Olds. Subjects include flying, dental treatment, encountering Charles Bukowski in the Dunedin Public Library, and not wanting to get out of bed."

• Olds held the Robert Burns Fellowship in 1978. • A work by Olds, Disjointed on Wellington Railway Station was selected for Best New Zealand Poems 2001. • In 2005 Olds was the first recipient of the Janet Frame Literary Trust Award for Poetry.