Heather McPherson


Heather Avis McPherson was a poet and lesbian feminist who played a key role in supporting women artists and writers in New Zealand.

Career

Born in Tauranga, McPherson studied at the University of Auckland and Canterbury University. McPherson's poetry first appeared in print in 1963, and she went on to publish five collections of poetry. In 1974, McPherson started one of New Zealand's first women's artist collectives, the Women Artists Group in Christchurch, and from this co-founded the first New Zealand women's art journal, Spiral. Spiral provided a forum for female artists and writers to publish their work, during a time in which female artists struggled to be recognised in New Zealand. McPherson herself said, "I worked with the material we received–that it didn't reflect our own reality didn't bother me too much, it was the idea of women working together positively, that was the aim, and the amalgam of arts – photographers as well as poets, writers, painters etc." The journal was first published in 1976 and was a collective effort from the outset, with the Spiral Collective established to produce the publication. The first four issues were published by McPherson and the Christchurch collective, issue five was published by a Wellington collective, issue six by a Tauranga collective, and issue seven by a national collective. Spiral also became a floating imprint used by these autonomous groups to publish other books by New Zealand women, including McPherson's debut poetry book, A figurehead: a face, which was the first New Zealand poetry collection by an out lesbian, Keri Hulme's Booker Prize-winning novel The Bone People, The House of the Talking Cat by J C Sturm, and Drawing Together by Janet Charman, Marina Bachmann and Sue Fitchett. Artists and writers who were associated with the Women Artists Group initiatives and the Spiral Collectives included Joanna Margaret Paul, Marian Evans, Allie Eagle, Bridie Lonie, and Anna Keir, all prominent figures in the timeline of the feminist art movement in New Zealand. In 1980, McPherson was involved in the opening show at the Women's Gallery in Wellington, where she worked as a co-ordinator. Her poem, Have You Heard of Artemisia? was painted on the 1981 Matariki Mural on the outside wall of the gallery on Harris Street.

Works

Poetry books

Source: National Library of NZ
Sources: National Library of NZ and Aotearoa Poetry Sound Archive