Piet Nieuwland
Garments of the Dead: Old and new work by Koenraad Kuiper (Quentin Wilson Publishing, 2023), 192pp, $37.50; Saga by Hannah Mettner (Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2023), 88pp, $25; Liveability by Claire Orchard (Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2023), 80pp, $25
Garments of the Dead: Old and new work by Koenraad Kuiper, a collation of poem sequences, reveals him to be a poet possessed of a playful, precise wit. A former professor of linguistics at the University of Canterbury, Kuiper is someone who pays close attention to the way information is presented by language registers and tonal shifts. His poems convey a strong sense of his wide background knowledge of the worlds of arts and literature, as well as his viewpoint as a post-war migrant, coming out with his family from Europe to New Zealand. With my own Dutch ancestry, I could see my deceased father and uncle really enjoying these poems, which portray experiences similar to theirs and their families during World War II and later as immigrants. They will also appeal to later generations of those with Dutch ancestry, curious about their elders’ formative origins. [Read more…]