Genevieve Scanlan

Sparks Among the Stubble by John Weir (Cold Hub Press, 2021), 88pp, $28; Meeting Rita by Jenny Powell (Cold Hub Press, 2021), 80pp, $27.50; Locals Only: An outsider’s insider perspective on Aotearoa by Craig Foltz (Compound Press, 2020), 108pp, $25

The back cover of Sparks Among the Stubble describes John Weir as ‘a priest as well as a poet’. In this, his fifth collection of poetry, Weir’s two vocations are undoubtedly entwined. The title is taken from scripture: ‘He has tested them like gold in a furnace … When the time comes for his visitation they will shine and run to and fro like sparks among the stubble.’ What these verses mean to Weir is open to inference, and it quickly becomes clear that this poetic homily will not be a dour one. Weir’s poetry places equal thematic emphasis on the ways people are ‘tested’ and the way they ‘shine’. [Read more…]

Victor Billot

Nowhere Is Too Far Off by Peter Bland (The Cuba Press, 2020), 60pp, $25; Latitudes: New & selected poems 1954–2020 by Owen Leeming (Cold Hub Press, 2021), 144pp, $35; After Hours Trading & The Flying Squad by Jeffrey Paparoa Holman (Carbide Press, 2021), 102pp, $25

Peter Bland’s 25th collection is a testament to a lengthy poetic career. It’s a slim, modest volume, and the poems in it seem slim too—stripped back and conversational for the most part. But the quiet pace and relaxed style is a trap for the unwary. These poems pack a punch. Distilled to an essential state where every word has its place, they shift from surreal dream-states to an often startling clarity of vision.

A poet who has been publishing since the 1960s, Bland is a transplant. He arrived in New Zealand as a young man from Yorkshire, where he was born in 1934. Bland has moved between Europe and New Zealand over his life. He is a friend of Owen Leeming, but unlike Leeming he is widely published, his books appearing almost annually in the last decade. Gregory O’Brien notes a ‘luminous quality’ in Bland’s poems, which is fitting—they give a sense of small, glowing incandescent bulbs, casting out light and heat. [Read more…]

Philip Temple

The Little Ache – a German notebook by Ian Wedde (Victoria University Press, 2021), 144pp., $30; All Tito’s Children by Tim Grgec (Victoria University Press, 2021), 96pp., $25

In these two volumes of poetry, Ian Wedde and Tim Grgec search for ancestors and ancestral meaning in European lands torn and shadowed by tribal conflicts and deadly authoritarian solutions. Both books are timely when we hear almost daily of the importance of whakapapa. They are fine reminders that, although ancestry here may be decadally recent, tūpuna live in wairua, in both meanings of the word, no matter how distant or ancient its roots. [Read more…]

This review was first published in the print edition of Landfall 241

Siobhan Harvey

No Traveller Returns by Ruth France (Cold Hub Press, 2020), 104pp, $27.50; Wanting to Tell You Everything by Elizabeth Brooke-Carr (Caselberg Press, 2020), 66pp, $25; The Needles of the Marram Grass by W.S. Broughton (SwampThing, 2019), 130pp, $25

The ease with which we forget or cast aside writers after their deaths, particularly those identifying as women, non-Pākehā and non-hetero-normative, is a problem with a long history. For centuries, authors around the world and their bodies of work have been lost to subsequent generations.

No Traveller Returns by Ruth France, Wanting to Tell You Everything by Elizabeth Brooke-Carr and The Needles of the Marram Grass by W.S. Broughton are three posthumously published New Zealand collections. The poetry within their covers illustrates the way that powerful work endures beyond an author’s passing. These books are potential prompts to us to rethink how we save and savour contemporary literature so that future generations have access to it. [Read more…]

Genevieve Scanlan

the moment, taken by Jennifer Compton (Recent Work Press, 2021), 72pp, AUD$19.95; Sleeping with Stones by Serie Barford (Anahera Press, 2021), 77pp, $25; Rejoice Instead: The collected poems of Peter Hooper edited by Pat White (Cold Hub Press, 2021), 224pp, $42.50

the moment, taken is Jennifer Compton’s eleventh collection of poetry. The back cover tells us these are poems drawn from eidetic memory—that is, ‘relating to or denoting mental images having unusual vividness and detail, as if actually visible’. The titular poem is a fine example of this, providing both the vivid detail and the surreal quality of an individual childhood memory: ‘then that once, i was waylaid / by a green lure / a staircase / up into a wilderness […] (when i got to school / i told a lie / with eyes averted)’. [Read more…]

Tim Saunders

The Death of Music Journalism by Simon Sweetman (The Cuba Press, 2020), 90pp., $25; Shelter by Kirsten Le Harivel (The Cuba Press, 2021), 84pp., $25; The Oceanic Feeling by Jack Ross (Salt & Greyboy Press, 2021), 72pp., $20 

I have on my desk a phonograph that was built in the late 1800s. It is a thing of beauty, and I keep it as a reminder that music weaves through lives and families. It can tie us to particular places and times. For many of us, music is as crucial as the air we breathe.

Music has always been important in the life of poet Simon Sweetman. He has been loved and loathed as a music reviewer, blogger and podcaster for a number of years. His opinions have been welcomed and ridiculed, yet he has always stayed true to his beliefs and assessments. Truth is at the heart of good poetry, so it is no surprise that Sweetman has produced an honest and veracious collection of poems. In The Death of Music Journalism, we see a life in which music plays an integral part. [Read more…]