Rachel Bush (26 December 1941 — 23 March 2016) was a New Zealand poet and teacher. Her work was widely published in books, anthologies and literary magazines.
She was a member of the first MA course in creative writing run by Bill Manhire at Victoria University of Wellington in 1996[3][4] and her first book of poetry, The Hungry Woman, was based on work written during that course.[2] Her work was published in Best New Zealand Poems[5][6] and in 4th Floor Literary Journal[7] as well as on online poetry blogs[8] and in journals including Sport,Landfall, Turbine[9] and Faber's Introduction.[3]
In 2004, she was poet in residence at Wellington Hospital as part of the Poets in Workplaces Scheme.[10] The resulting poems were published as a booklet by the Wai-te-ata Press in 2006, accompanied by photographs taken in the Neonatal Unit by Alan Knowles.[11] One of her poems, "Cicadas", was set to music by Gillian Whitehead, having been commissioned by harpist Helen Webby (with funding from Creative New Zealand).[12][13][14]
Bush was married to musician Richard Nunns and had two daughters and five grandchildren.[4] She died on 23 March 2016, a month before the publication of Thought Horses, although a copy of the book was ready in time for her to see it.[15][16][17]Thought Horses was posthumously longlisted for the 2017 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.[18]
Bibliography
The Hungry Woman (Victoria University Press, 1997)
The Unfortunate Singer (Victoria University Press, 2002)[19]
All patients report here, with photos by Alan Knowles (Wai-te-ata Press, 2006)
Nice Pretty Things (Victoria University Press, 2011)[20][21][22][23]
Thought Horses (Victoria University Press, 2016)[1][24][25]
^"Thought Horses – Rachel Bush". NZSA The New Zealand Society of Authors (PEN NZ Inc) Te Puni Kaituhi o Aotearoa. 19 April 2016. Retrieved 5 January 2020.
