Sam Hunt is a New Zealand poet, especially known for his public performances of poetry, not only his own poems, but also the poems of many other poets.
Hunt was educated at St Peter's College, Auckland which he attended from 1958-63.
Hunt was among the younger New Zealand poets who began to be published in the late 1960s. He was first published in Landfall in 1967.
Hunt's distinctive appearance – tall and thin, usually wearing long, tight, trousers ("Foxton straights" he has called them) with vests and open-chested shirts, with long hair curling wildly above a well-worn face – is complemented by the familiar gravelly drawl, the rhythmic, sometimes staccato and sometimes incantatory quality of his recitation (often tapping his fingers or flicking a hand to emphasise the poetic beat) and the execution of occasional small dance-like steps of concentration. These have all made him one of New Zealand's most recognisable figures. Once, almost as well-known was his long-time travelling companion, the dog Minstrel.
Hunt was awarded a Robert Burns Fellowship at the University of Otago in 1975, and spent 1976 in Dunedin. He was awarded the Queen's Service Medal for community service in the 1985 Queen's Birthday Honours and in the 2010 Queen's Birthday Honours, he was appointed a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to poetry.] In 2012 he received a Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement.