Education
Hunt was educated at St Peter's College, Auckland which he attended from 1958 to 1963. At St Peter's, Hunt's individualism came into conflict with the Christian Brother's authoritarianism and puritanism. (He has said that he was strapped at the age of 14 for reciting a poem by James K. Baxter which had sexual imagery, in the classroom. ) Life was not made easier by a bad stutter, and poems working through the tensions and fantasies of adolescence became a form of release. Some of his earliest poems were published in the St Peter's College annual magazines. Despite problems at school, Hunt, who was a good sprinter and diver, did not leave until asked to. He benefited, in his final year, from having poet Ken Arvidson as his English master, and he obtained University Entrance". Hunt has said that "if Mr Arvidson ... had not come to the school, I would not have lasted as long as I did, and I'd just turned sixteen when I left. He introduced me to poets like Gordon Challis, who I've gone on loving ever since". Ken Arvidson endowed a poetry prize at St Peter's and this was awarded to Sam Hunt in 1963. One of Hunt's most reproduced poems is Brother Lynch, a poem about a St Peter's College teacher, Brother J B Lynch, who was sympathetic to the young Hunt. An annual literature competition at St Peter's College is named after Sam Hunt, and he has acted as its judge.
In the period 1964 to 1967, Hunt oscillated between Auckland and Wellington, attending university in both cities. Along with brief periods truck-driving and panel-beating, Hunt graduated from teachers college and taught briefly before deciding, in the late 1960s, that poetry was his vocation.
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