ABOUT JOHN BARR
Scottish-New Zealand poet who printed a "little volume" of poems in Edinburgh in 1862 and had his writing described as "this Scots-colonial parritch... watery gruel at the best" by fellow poet Allen Curnow .
He farmed a property on Halfway Bush after moving to Otago in 1852.
He founded the New Zealand Robert Burns Society.
He married Mary Jamieson and they had four children.
His writing was reviewed and critiqued by fellow New Zealand poet Allen Curnow .
