Harry Ricketts was brought up in England, Malaysia and Hong Kong born in London, and graduated from Trinity College, Oxford.
He has published 24 books including nine collections of poems (most recently Just Then, 2012), an acclaimed biography of Rudyard Kipling, The Unforgiving Minute (1999), the extended personal essays How To Live Elsewhere (2004) and How To Catch A Cricket Match (2006).
He has edited and co-edited various anthologies, including the prize-winning Spirit in a Strange Land (2002) with Mike Grimshaw and Paul Morris and The Awa Book of New Zealand Sports Writing (2010). In 2010, to very positive reviews he also published (with Paula Green) the critical book 99 Ways into New Zealand Poetry and a collective biography of a dozen WW1 poets, Strange Meetings: The Poets of the Great War.
He co-edits the review journal New Zealand Books, is married and has a son in the rock band Phoenix Foundation. He lives in Wellington where he teaches English Literature and creative non-fiction at Victoria University.
Harry Ricketts appears in Five New Zealand Poets
and Chairs Afghanistan: The Human Cost
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