Farewell Harvey McQueen

I was so sad to hear that poet and anthologist Harvey McQueen died on Christmas morning.

There are lots of other and better farewells for him on the net, including this one by his wife Anne Else on Harvey's own blog: http://stoatspring.blogspot.com/2011/01/last-post.html, but I just wanted to say a short quiet farewell too. I didn't know Harvey very well, but met him at various literary things, and more recently I've known him through his blog. He wrote a lovely review of my first poetry collection, which I always appreciated. The thing I remember him most and often for is a kowhai seedling I got at the launch for his book This Piece of Earth - if you bought the book you got a seedling. The seedling is now a smallish tree and, while I'm no longer in the habit of naming all my plants, I've always thought of that tree as 'Harvey'.

Here's a few of the other tributes:

• http://tuesdaypoem.blogspot.com/2011/01/tuesday-poet-harvey-mcqueen-13.html
• http://tinglingcatch.blogspot.com/2011/01/tingling-catch-contributor-harvey.html
• http://mary-mccallum.blogspot.com/2011/01/harvey-mcqueen-rip.html
• http://harveymolloy.blogspot.com/2011/01/harvey-mcqueen.html
• http://helenlowe.info/blog/2011/01/04/in-memory-of-my-fellow-tuesday-poet-harvey-mcqueen/