Ruth Dallas was born in 1919 in Invercargill, New Zealand, where she grew up in a close-knit working-class family. She later claimed to be “at a loss to account for the fact that I wrote poetry in an environment where I knew no one who was interested in poetry”, although she also describes, in her autobiography
Curved Horizon(1991), the books her grandmother gave her, the ballads her grandmother sang at the family piano, and the long narrative poems her mother used to recite. Her early poetry quickly attracted the attention of
Landfalleditor Charles Brasch, who included her as one of six young poets selected for a special edition of
Landfallin 1948, and her first collection of poetry,
Country Road and Other Poems, was published in 1953. She has published eight further collections…
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Citation: Jackson, Anna. "Ruth Dallas". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 02 July 2004 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1122, accessed 21 November 2024.]
