John Horrocks I, Clodia, and Other Portraits, by Anna Jackson (Auckland University Press, 2014), 70 pp., $24.99; Conversation by Owl-Light, by Alexandra Fraser (Steele Roberts, 2014), 72 pp., $19.99; Fallen Grace, by MaryJane Thomson, (The Night Press/HeadworX, 2014), 32 pp., $23 I Clodia, and Other Portraits centres around a novel response to the poems of […]
Labour Intensive
Peter Vangioni The Holloway Press, 1994–2013: A checklist of publications, edited by Francis McWhannell (Holloway Press, Auckland, 2014). Published on the occasion of the exhibition ‘Dark Arts: Twenty years of the Holloway Press’, Gus Fisher Gallery, Auckland (4 July to 31 August 2014); 16 pp., $30 2014 saw the unfortunate sudden demise of New Zealand’s […]
All This is Yours
Simone Oettli Māori Boy: A memoir of childhood by Witi Ihimaera (Vintage/Random House, 2014), 382 pp, $39.99 Even just a glance at the first tome of Witi Ihimaera’s projected three-volume memoir is sure to charm prospective readers. Visually, the book depicts the two things that are most dear to him during his childhood. The cover […]
A Crystal in a Dark Cave
Peter Simpson Journals, 1938–1945, by Charles Brasch, transcribed by Margaret Scott, annotated by Andrew Parsloe, with an introductory essay by Rachel Barrowman, (University of Otago Press, 2013), 646 pp., $60 Some 530 pages of this compact-sized but thick hardback consist of Charles Brasch’s complete journals from July 1938 – when he passed through the United […]
Clear Skies Above on Ascension Day
Nick Ascroft The Yellow Buoy: Poems 2007–2012, by C.K. Stead, (Auckland University Press, 2013), 144 pp., $27.99 The poems of C.K. Stead ‘get poetry’. If I could choose any archetype for all budding poets to emulate it would be he who is perhaps the last of the double-initials-and-surname poets. The kind of adjectives one attaches […]
How to Write Things Closest to Yourself
Lynley Edmeades Enough, by Louise Wallace, (Victoria University Press, 2013), 63 pp., $25.00; Tear Water Tea, by Saradha Koirala, (Steele Roberts, 2013), 66 pp., $19.99 Louise Wallace’s first collection, Since June, was published in 2009. Four years is a pretty respectable time in which to produce a second collection, let alone come up with the […]
Married to a Corpse
Nicholas Reid Max Gate, by Damien Wilkins (Victoria University Press, 2013), 220 pp., $30. The sub-genre of novels about Great Writers seems to be a growing one, but it is sometimes troubling. I find that such novels are always arguing a case about the Great Writer in question, and are implicitly asking readers to accept […]
Taking Liberties
Simone Oettli Mansfield with Monsters — The Untold Stories of a New Zealand Icon, by Katherine Mansfield with Matt and Debbie Cowens (Steam Press, 2012), 240 pp., $25. Everything about this book raises questions, starting with the title. The link between Mansfield and monsters is nicely emphasized by alliteration, but why the awkward conjunction ‘with’? […]
Bridges Across Silos
Lisa Samuels A Common Strangeness: Contemporary Poetry, Cross-Cultural Encounter, Comparative Literature, by Jacob Edmond (Fordham University Press, 2012), 272 pp., $NZ 96.76. Jacob Edmond’s refreshing book focuses on concerns common to avant-garde poetry and comparative literature, specifically poetic material produced primarily in the 1980s and 1990s by six writers from China, Russia, and the […]
Amongst the Missing
Lawrence Jones The Auckland University Press Anthology of New Zealand Literature, edited by Jane Stafford and Mark Williams (AUP 2012), 1180 pp., $75 Sam Elworthy of AUP has said that he had hoped to be able to ‘put down the light weight publishing of Random-Penguin-House’ with this anthology, but when Graham Beattie pointed out […]
Scavenger Hunt
Paula Green A Made-Up Place: New Zealand in Young Adult Fiction, by Anna Jackson, Geoffrey Miles, Harry Ricketts, Tatjana Schaefer and Kathryn Walls (Victoria University Press, 2012) pp. 223, $40. Young adult fiction seems to me to be a leaky genre: a literary intersection that raises questions the minute you try to define it. Is […]
Not Camp Sargeson
Michael Morrissey Speaking Frankly: The Frank Sargeson Memorial Lectures 2003-2010, edited by Sarah Shieff, (Cape Catley Ltd, 2011), 200 pp., $31.99. The industrious Dr Sarah Shieff has recently added two books to the growing collection of Sargesoniana — the superbly selected and edited Letters (a book so solid it would stop a .22 bullet, […]