David Eggleton
A Roderick Finlayson Reader edited by Roger Hickin, (Cold Hub Press, 2020), 252pp, $42.50; Roderick Finlayson: A Man from Another World a biography by Roger Hickin (Cold Hub Press, 2022), 288pp, $42.50
Roderick Finlayson was described by the poet Kevin Ireland in a poem as ‘a saintly, smiling man’, who ‘often troubled our consciences’, although he was ‘sometimes wrong’. In these two books, A Roderick Finlayson Reader and Roderick Finlayson: A Man from Another World, the indefatigable publisher, biographer and literary resurrectionist Roger Hickin makes it clear he does not support the argument placing Finlayson on the wrong side of history, and as an anachronism. Finlayson, Hicken argues, was not only from another time, he was ahead of his time, for society has moved to recognising and embracing mātauranga Māori, Māori indigenous knowledge, as ecologically sound in an age of climate change and global warming. [Read more…]