Chris Tse

Somewhere a Cleaner, edited by Andrienne Jansen, Te Rongomai Tipene-Matua, Joan Begg, Wesley Hollis and Nicky Subono (Landing Press, 2020), 184pp., $25; Second Person by Rata Gordon (Victoria University Press, 2020), 80pp., $25; Ngā Whakamatuatanga / Interludes by Vaughan Rapatahana (CyberWit, 2019), 136pp., US$15

Somewhere a Cleaner is an anthology from Landing Press, whose kaupapa is to make poetry part of everyday life and to give a voice to people who don’t have much voice. This unique collection fulfils that aim by bringing together mostly unknown and novice writers to share their stories about that most universal of acts: cleaning. The book’s framework is not dissimilar to the one Landing Press used in All of Us and More of Us, two collections that focused on the stories of New Zealanders from migrant and refugee backgrounds. There is some crossover with those earlier books in Somewhere a Cleaner, which includes contributors who have settled in New Zealand from places as far-flung as West Siberia, Syria, Sri Lanka and Cambodia. You’ll spot a few familiar names when scanning the contents list—Lynn Jenner, Siobhan Harvey, Tina Shaw, Joanna Cho, Johanna Aitchison and Vaughan Rapatahana—but the book’s contributors’ list is dominated by new or novice writers. This is rather refreshing. The editors accepted open submissions and actively sought people to include to ensure that the book accurately reflected the diverse backgrounds and experiences of cleaners in New Zealand. The result is a mix of poetry and short prose pieces that shine a light on a topic and occupation that has been politicised in recent years. [Read more…]

Claire Lacey

Pins by Natalie Morrison (Victoria University Press, 2020), 70pp., $25; Things OK With You? by Vincent O’Sullivan (Victoria University Press, 2021), 96pp., $25; I Am In Bed With You by Emma Barnes (Auckland University Press, 2021), 88pp., $24.99

Writing in the first person is a way of establishing a narrative character with a specific voice and perspective. It can be easy to conflate the ‘I’ of the poem with the ‘I’ of its author, but ‘I’ can be much more subtle and even mischievous. Who speaks, and to whom? The following three collections are very different case studies on how poets engage with the first person singular.

Pins by Natalie Morrison is a book-length poem that explores a fictional narrator’s relationship to her missing sister. This long character study reminded me of Canadian poet Sandy Pool, whose poetry books Exploding into Night and Undark each pursue an untold narrative about a publicly reported tragedy. I enjoy this approach to the book-length project, where a particular perspective is thoroughly investigated. In Pins, the narrator adopts her lost sister’s obsession with pins:

I have begun to dedicate things to you.

These poems, for example; I pin snippets

to your bedroom wall.  [Read more…]

John Geraets

The Wilder Years: Selected poems by David Eggleton (Otago University Press, 2021), 313pp., $40

I read David Eggleton’s poems as serial libations.¹ Libation, as a poetic approach, has its strengths and weaknesses, and in this review my aim is to address both. To begin with, we note that any poet who holds the esteem of their literary community over almost four decades—including a stint as editor of Landfall (2011–18) and another as current poet laureate (2019–21)—is deserving of our attention. This attractively produced hardback, The Wilder Years, is the hardly-over-yet culmination of a good life’s work and includes some 187 poems selected from ten volumes published between 1986 and 2020, and a small number of new poems. [Read more…]

Jordan Hamel

Ghosts by Siobhan Harvey (Otago University Press, 2021), 112pp., $27.50; Five O’Clock Shadows by Richard Langston (Cuba Press, 2020), 48pp., $25; Fancy Dancing: New and selected poems 2004–2020 by Bernadette Hall (Victoria University Press, 2020), 128pp., $30

The one we’re forced to repeat: here is the story

They create and rewrite

into poems such as this

The prologue ‘Night, a Place of Regeneration’ builds the architecture for Siobhan Harvey’s latest collection, Ghosts. The writing and rewriting of the same story, the story of movement, of migration, of memory, of home, of the individual and communal, all of which become ghosts that constantly regenerate through the book.

So much of this collection unpacks what it means to haunt and be haunted, what experiences and trauma we give voice and a soul to, what our history owes us, and how that history sits within a life that is not just ours.  [Read more…]

Siobhan Harvey 

The Savage Coloniser Book by Tusiata Avia (Victoria University Press, 2021), 96pp, $25; Magnolia 木蘭 by Nina Mingya Powles (Seraph Press, 2021), 82pp, $30

Now that the glitz, commotion and hype of the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards are over for another year, readers are left to the books themselves. By now we know those that made the longlist, those that made the shortlist and, undoubtedly meritorious also, those that didn’t. In this last category one might whisper—or, post-literary appraisal, can one say roar?—authors and titles such as Kay McKenzie Cooke’s uplifting third collection Upturned (The Cuba Press), Rata Gordon’s Second Person (Victoria University Press) and Oscar Upperton’s tremendous New Transgender Blockbusters (Victoria University Press). This, of course, is the nature of any prize-giving beast—subjectivity. It is also the nature of the review and the reviewer. The celebrations and commiserations roundly completed, it falls to me to bring my subjectivity to two books that made the illustrious shortlist category in the aforementioned awards: The Savage Coloniser Book by Tusiata Avia and Nina Mingya Powles’ much heralded (both nationally and internationally) Magnolia 木蘭.  [Read more…]