Adrienne Lynton Meria aka Middleton

Adrienne Meria was born in Wellington and was educated in various state and Catholic schools in the North and South Island. She went to Auckland Teachers’ College and graduated with a Primary Teacher’s Certificate. She worked as a teacher and as a toll operator in Auckland. Meria travelled overseas, lived in Japan for seven years with her partner and returned to New Zealand where she has lived ever since. She can remember writing at the age of nine and over the years has written "vast heaps" of poetry which is now "clogging up" her apple boxes. Adrienne has had two or three poems published but generally has not sought publication. Some of her work has been designed for choral performance but has yet to be performed. Adrienne writes about "people’s relationship with places, about other creatures in those places, and issues of what we are in terms of a species and how we relate to one another in the world." She is very interested in this transition era in New Zealand, has attended Nga Puna Waihanga hui and is involved in Kohanga Reo.

Biographical sources

• Phone conversation with Meria, 12 July 1998.
• Province: New Nelson Writing. Ed. Rachel Bush and Carol Markwell. Consultant Ed. Bill Manhire. Nelson: Nelson Provincial Arts Council, 1987. 84