The Glass Guitar comprises thirty-three previously uncollected and mostly unpublished poems in which Peter Olds reflects frankly on some of his characteristic preoccupations: the imperfections of life and art; his travels in space and time; his sometimes challenging relationship with his mentor, friend, and fellow poet James K. Baxter. In his introduction John Gibb describes Olds as “a navigator of contrasting and sometimes contradictory worlds, a kind of battered Zen ambassador of humanity, an at times irreverent pilgrim making his way through life”, and argues the case for Olds as a multi-disiplinary artist, as evidenced in Out of the Jaws of Wesley, a miscellany of Olds’ poems, prose, book cover designs and art work, (Cold Hub Press, 2022).

Peter Olds was a Robert Burns fellow at the University of Otago in 1978, and in 2005 was the first recipient of the Janet Frame Literary Trust Award for Poetry. He died in Dunedin at the age of 79 on 31 August 2023.