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 and other young poets were interested in daily linguistic usage and in the natural units of speech rather than any special poetic language. This expressed itself in a restoration of oral aspects of poetry and a stress on performance. Many of his poems are characteristically expressions of feeling in a single surface line which leads to a poignant close. His own experience is his single subject; moments in his life, love and its loss, and poems about his father, mother and sons. A number of Hunt's works share common themes and characters, such as the poems
Porirua Friday Night and ''Girl with Black Eye in Grocer's Shop'', both of which feature the same female character. "Everything Hunt writes is geared for personal performance: his lyrics are deliberately uncomplicated and colloquial; their traditional forms and regular rhythms allow 'the stories and myths [to be] fleshed and invested with energy and power'". His romanticism has been compared with that of another New Zealand poet,
Hone Tuwhare and their romanticism has been credited with contributing to the popularity of both poets. From the late 1960s until 1997, Hunt lived in a number of locations around the
Pāuatahanui inlet near Wellington. Many of the events in each dwelling are described in his verse, notably Bottle Creek (where he was joined by his famous black and white sheepdog, "Minstrel"),
Battle Hill (where his older son, Tom, was born), Death's Corner (formerly the farmhouse of a Mr Death) and then back to a boatshed in
Paremata. Other poems (see above) are set in Porirua nearby. In the 1980s Hunt with
Jack Lasenby and Ian Riggir (who both lived in Paremata) published poems on an 1886 upright press obtained from the Government Printing Office. He lived for a time
Pukerua Bay near Wellington. In 1997 Hunt moved to
Waiheke Island near Auckland. Hunt has been a central figure in New Zealand literature since the publication of his first mature work
From Bottle Creek: Selected Poems 1967–69 in 1969, published when the poet was aged just 23. He was a prolific writer in the 1970s–1990s. By focusing on the public performance aspects of poetry, Hunt was the "young poet" who most successfully reached a wider audience. Hunt pointed out how his poetry showed up the intellectuality of his contemporaries and their inclination to see popular culture as input rather than output. Much of Hunt's output is in a style similar to those of
Denis Glover,
Alistair Campbell, and
James K. Baxter. These poets were personal friends as well as influences on Hunt. Baxter was particularly important to, and wrote many poems for, Hunt. In one of the most important of these poems,
Letter to Sam Hunt, Baxter provided advice to the young Hunt. with which he is familiar in both English and Hungarian (having heard it as a child often delivered by a Hungarian friend of his family)). Hunt also admires the work of
Bob Dylan amongst many other poets. In 2014, Hunt and Kilgour reunited with The Heavy 8s, to create a second album. Unlike the first album, where Kilgour was lead vocalist, Hunt is the lead vocalist on "The 9th". The album was released in May 2015 to critical acclaim and was supported by gigs in Queenstown, Dunedin, Wellington and Auckland following its release. ==Iconic status==