Jodie Dalgleish Gavin Hipkins: The Domain (Victoria University Press, 2017), 240 pp., $70 The monograph Gavin Hipkins: The Domain, released in November 2017 to mark the opening of the Dowse Art Museum’s largest-ever survey exhibition of the same name, is a beautifully produced, super-illustrated tome. It begins with three ‘meaty’ essays, ends with a plethora […]
Having a WORD With You
WORD Christchurch Festival, 29 August to 2 September 2018 Giovanni Tiso I used to be a writers’ festival sceptic. Aside from attending the odd book launch growing up, I never felt a great need to listen to my favourite writers present or discuss their work, let alone many writers at the same time. It struck me […]
Float, Float On …
David Geary Floating Islanders: Pasifika theatre in Aotearoa by Lisa Warrington and David O’Donnell (Otago University Press, 2017), 284 pp. $39.95 Our quest should not to be for a revival of our past cultures but for the creation of new cultures which are free of the taint of colonialism and based firmly on our own […]
A Dynamic Optimism
Peter Shand Gordon Walters: New vision edited by Lucy Hammonds, Laurence Simmons and Julia Waite (Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki & Dunedin Public Art Gallery, 2017), 244 pp., $79 The title of Gordon Walters: New vision presents its own wero. Building from Walters’ innovating position within New Zealand art, the title points to the […]
Performing Otherwise
Emma Willis Performing Dramaturgy by Fiona Graham (Playmarket Press, 2018), 189 pp., $40 If you have picked up a programme for a new play, devised or dance-theatre work, you may have seen the job title ‘dramaturge’ listed in the production credits. But what is a dramaturge? Even for those within the theatre industry, the concept […]
Bridgehead and Beacon
Simon Cunliffe Dawn Raids by Oscar Kightley (Playmarket, Victoria University Press, 2017), 103 pp., $18 Twenty years on from its premiere in 1997, and more than 40 from the events it depicts, Oscar Kightley’s seminal play, Dawn Raids, continues to resonate – and perhaps for more than the obvious reasons. The raids, a shameful episode […]
Forgotten Giants
Norman Franke Poetry and Exile: Letters from New Zealand 1938–1948 by Karl Wolfskehl, edited and translated by Nelson Wattie (Cold Hub Press, 2017), 464 pp., $45 Now virtually unknown in New Zealand, the German-Jewish poet Karl Wolfskehl (1869–1948) made a great personal impression on the first generation of postcolonial writers. Frank Sargeson, writing about his […]
The Tragic Sense of Life
Denys Trussell Notes from the Margins: The West Coast’s Peter Hooper by Pat White (Frontiers Press, 2017), 202 pp., $40 Peter Hooper (1919–1991) spent most his life in Westland, but travelled far by means of literature. His adult life was lived alone, but he was not a loner. He embedded himself (with reservations) in the […]
Custom-made for the Stage
Helen Watson White Best Playwriting Book Ever by Roger Hall (Playmarket, 2016), 108 pp., $22; Shift: Three plays by Alison Quigan, Vivienne Plumb and Lynda Chanwai-Earle (Playmarket, 2016), 280 pp., $35 When Roger Hall set out on what he didn’t know would be a long and fruitful theatre career, he knew only one rule (‘one of […]
Private Admissions Between Friends
David Herkt Jay To Bee: Janet Frame’s letters to William Theophilus Brown, edited by Denis Harold (Counterpoint, Berkley, California, 2016), 464 pp., $45.20 All letters are performances. There is a writer and there is an audience. The relationship between the two is never static, but it turns in line with time and circumstance. Jay to […]
Tracing One Iwi’s Carving Style
Andrew Paul Wood A Whakapapa of Tradition: One hundred years of Ngāti Porou carving, 1830–1930 by Ngarino Ellis with new photography by Natalie Robertson (Auckland University Press, 2016), 304 pp., $69.99 The arrival of Pākehā in Aotearoa was not a good thing for Māori whakairo taonga; vide the denuded whare of Ngāpuhi, their carved ancestors […]
Invitations to a Fantastic Voyage
David Eggleton Coral Route: Tasman Empire Airways Ltd, flying boats and the South Pacific by Gerry Barton and Philip Heath (Steele Roberts, 2015) 209 pp., $45; Real Modern: Everyday New Zealand in the 1950s and 1960s by Bronwyn Labrum (Te Papa Press, 2015), 429 pp., $75 Skywatchers in Auckland in the early 1950s would have […]
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