John Barr (poet)

John Barr of Craigilee (24 October 1809 – 18 September 1889) was a Scottish–New Zealand poet.

Born in Paisley, Scotland in 1809, Barr moved to Otago in 1852, and farmed a property at Halfway Bush.

[1] In 1857 he moved with his wife Mary Jamieson (née Lamb) and their four children to Balclutha, and established a farm which he called Craigilee.

[2] In his time, he was considered the Laureate of Otago Province, of which he wrote, in Lowland Scots: By Feb 1862 John was in Dunedin when he printed a 'little volume' of poems, published in Edinburgh.

The 'Otago Daily Times' wrote ... "quite irrespective of their local character, which endows them with a peculiar attraction, the Poems possess intrinsic merits in themselves which entitle them to rank high as literary productions" Allen Curnow described his writing as "this Scots-colonial parritch... watery gruel at the best."