Christodoulos Moisa

Christodoulos Evangeli Georgiou Moisa (born 1948) is a New Zealand poet, artist, photographer, writer, essayist and art teacher.

Moisa was born in 1948 in Lower Hutt, New Zealand. His parents were immigrants from Cyprus. His father was Evangelos Georgiou Moisa from Marathovounos and his mother was Athena Kleanthi from Angastina two villages in central Cyprus.

Moisa was educated at Patriki and Angastina Primary Schools in Cyprus, Mount Cook Primary School, Wellington (1960–1962), Wellington College (1963–1967), and Victoria University of Wellington and University of Auckland in New Zealand. He attended the Sir John School of Art London in 1973 and The Quay School of the Arts at UCOL, Whanganui, New Zealand in 2002. At The Quay School of the Arts he completed his Bachelor of Fine Arts which he started at Auckland University in 1972, in print-making. From 1954 to 1959 he lived in Varosia/Famagusta a provincial capital in eastern Cyprus and the villages of Patriki and Angastina. He also lived in Angastina 18 months before 1974 coup and Turkish invasion.

He was awarded the National Poetry Prize at the Te Awamutu Rose Festival in 1981, the Queen Elizabeth the II Arts Council Fellowship in 1983, and the Whitirea Poetry Prize in 1991 for his long poem "In the Shadow of the Cathedral".

During his Queen Elizabeth the II Arts Council fellowship tenure he trialled a scheme whereby the arts would be taught to people who were unlikely to receive such training. Moisa taught poetry at Dunedin's Crippled Children Society. This scheme eventually lead to the Arts in Prisons Scheme. In the seventies Moisa as a volunteer, taught art to inmates at Mount Eden Prison, in Auckland.

He is the owner/manager/editor of One Eyed Press which has published the poetry of New Zealand poets among them Iain Sharp,Win Jones and Peter Olds. To date Moisa has published seven of his own books of poems also under the One Eyed Press imprint.

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