Erik Kennedy

Shape of the Heart by Kevin Ireland (Quentin Wilson Publishing, 2020), 64pp., $24.99; This Is Your Real Name by Elizabeth Morton (Otago University Press, 2020), 72pp., $27.50; The Wanderer by Ron Riddell (HeadworX, 2020), 84pp., $25

It shouldn’t be surprising that a book of poems dedicated to a cohort of fellow octogenarian writers (including Maurice Gee, Vincent O’Sullivan and C.K. Stead) should muse on the ageing process—its frustrations, indignities and lessons. And if the poet is Kevin Ireland, it shouldn’t be a surprise that many of those poems are crackers. Ireland has written good poems about ageing since before he could claim to be old; I’m thinking of, for example, ‘An old man on Capri’, from 1990’s Tiberius at the Beehive: 

There is nothing that amuses me more,

so far from the Forum, in my decline,

than to torture the politicians

 

with the prospect of my return. [Read more…]

Patricia Prime

Body Politic by Mary Cresswell (The Cuba Press, 2020), 68pp., $25; Far-Flung by Rhian Gallagher (Auckland University Press, 2020), 96pp., $24.99; Michael, I Thought You Were Dead by Michael Fitzsimons (The Cuba Press, 2020), 92pp., $25.00

Body Politic by Mary Cresswell is an inspired collection of poems. It is an ambitious attempt to transfer a scientist’s concern for detail into poetry. In part the volume describes the strange paradox of the pandemic that threatens humanity, while at the same time revealing the fortitude of humankind to overcome adversity.

As a surgeon cuts into the human body, the poet cuts into our perceptions of the world. Cresswell’s poems consist of words, satire and absurdity as they move between people, science and nature.

The most expressive poems in this collection are in those lucid and limpid lines where time slows—lines that lodge in the reader’s mind, as in the following stanza from the title poem, ‘Body politic’:

I liked the sinister look of you—we all did—and I was left alone to

play on your banks. [Read more…]

Vaughan Rapatahana

Funkhaus by Hinemoana Baker (Victoria University Press, 2020), 79pp., $25; Upturned by Kay McKenzie Cooke (The Cuba Press, 2020), 98pp., $25; AUP New Poets 6 (Ben Kemp, Vanessa Crofskey and Chris Stewart) (Auckland University Press, 2020), 114pp., $29.99

These are three new collections of poetry, all from 2020: five poets, three of whom are categorised as ‘new’ or early in their careers as poets.

Across these three volumes, and even within the Auckland University Press collection, there is tremendous variety with little in common overall. Except that they are written largely in te reo Ingarihi, with the exception of some snippets of te reo Māori. [Read more…]

Erik Kennedy 

Always Song in the Water by Gregory O’Brien (Auckland University Press, 2019), 264pp., $45; Mary Shelley Makes a Monster by Octavia Cade (Aqueduct Press, 2019), 88pp., US$12; A Year of Misreading the Wildcats by Orchid Tierney (The Operating System, 2019), 108pp., US$24

A book about New Zealand’s remoteness from the rest of the world is timely right now. The fact that it has nothing to do with pandemics or politics is a blessed relief. Gregory O’Brien’s Always Song in the Water is an artist’s journal of dozens of sparkling essaylets, poems and artworks that together advance the thesis that Aotearoa New Zealand is first and foremost a Pacific nation. Based around two trips that O’Brien took to some of the farther-flung outposts of New Zealand’s territory—a road trip in Northland and a sea voyage to the Kermadecs—the book argues for an ‘archipelagic concept’ of nationhood. Only one-seventeenth of New Zealand is dry land, if you take into account its exclusive economic zone, and O’Brien makes a strong case that it is the sea that gives coherence to our lives and art. [Read more…]

Siobhan Harvey

Friday Prayers by Tony Beyer (Cold Hub Press, 2019), 40pp., $19.50; By the Lapels by Wes Lee (Steele Roberts, 2019), 76pp., $25; Neon Daze by Amy Brown (Victoria University Press, 2019), 143pp., $25; Moral Sloth by Nick Ascroft (Victoria University Press, 2019), 80pp., $25

Tony Beyer’s Friday Prayers proves the truth of that old adage: big things come in small packages. A chapbook, forty pages and five poems long perhaps, but therein lies such mastery of concept, language, form and evocation that it seems larger and longer, packing more cerebral punch than the sum of its parts.

[Read more…]