Chris Tse

How to Take Off Your Clothes by Hadassah Grace (Dead Bird Books, 2019), 52 pp., $25; Night As Day by Nikki-Lee Birdsey (Victoria University Press, 2019), 122 pp., $30; The Black and the White by Geoff Cochrane (Victoria University Press, 2019), 62 pp., $25

How to Take Off Your Clothes announces a striking new voice, one moulded by a life as an immigrant and sex worker, the daughter of ‘Christian celebrities’. This unapologetic, honest and often bracing debut lays bare the scars of Hadassah Grace’s past. It’s also the first book off the block from new publishing house Dead Bird Books, a venture set up by arts facilitator Samuel Walsh and writer Dominic Hoey. They’ve launched the book in suitably momentous fashion, with a nationwide poster campaign, artfully produced videos and a multi-city tour. It’s a sign of their commitment to, and belief in, Grace and her book, and one that will hopefully pay off in the long run for both parties. [Read more…]

Siobhan Harvey

Collected Poems by Fleur Adcock (Victoria University Press, 2019), 558pp., $50; Selected Poems by Brian Turner (Victoria University Press, 2019), 237pp., $40

A number of recent releases gather the extensive output of New Zealand’s most recognised poets. Cilla McQueen’s Poeta (Otago University Press); Night Burns with a White Fire: The essential Lauris Edmond (Steele Roberts): in these and elsewhere, substantial bodies of poetic work are brought together in easily accessible anthology form. Two new handsome volumes from Victoria University Press, Fleur Adcock’s Collected Poems and Brian Turner’s Selected Poems, continue the work of collecting the disparate oeuvre of our established poets into individual weighty tomes, thereby isolating and underscoring the importance of the authors concerned. [Read more…]

Briar Wood

Time to Sing Before the Dark by Helen Bascand (Caxton Press, 2018), 94 pp., $24.95; Voodoo by Peter Bland (Steele Roberts, 2018), 63 pp., $20; Remembering a Place I’ve Never Been: The past in three voices by Heather Bauchop (Cold Hub Press, 2018), 104 pp., $30; There’s No Place Like the Internet in Springtime by Erik Kennedy (Victoria University Press, 2018), 80 pp., $25

It is no easy task to summarise a life, but literary executor Joanna Preston’s selection achieves a balance in this volume of Helen Bascand’s writing, Time to Sing Before the Dark. It shows the steady growth of moments into words and lines, a filtering of time, reading, conversations and personal events, to the point where they become commonplace in a positive way.

There’s a spiritual dimension to the collection, a Christian history turned over and examined beside Graeco-Roman stories, balanced and polished, so that the poems reflect difficult and unhappy experiences while making the most of the opportunity to live them. [Read more…]

Siobhan Harvey

Dancing with Dragons by Ila Selwyn (Westridge Publishing, 2018), 112 pp., $20; Tongue Burglar by Jane Blaikie (Steele Roberts, 2018), 69 pp., $24.99; Poeta: Selected and new poems by Cilla McQueen (Otago University Press, 2018), 296 pp., $39.95

Once women were the subjects, not originators, of myths. Aphrodite, Pandora, Medusa, Baba Yaga, the Ice Maiden: the litany of women portrayed in fables as deceitful, shameful, manipulative and destructive is unfortunately extensive. Women, such depictions told us, must either conform or risk censure, perhaps even death.

It took a long time before women could control the creation of narrative. Since doing so, we’ve reshaped not just the voice and the subject of storytelling, but also its style and significance. In this, the ancient art of mythmaking isn’t dead, but rather is prevalent and, with each new set of storytellers, refreshed. In three recent poetry collections – Ila Selwyn’s Dancing with Dragons, Jane Blaikie’s Tongue Burglary and Cilla McQueen’s Poeta: Selected and new poems – there is evidence of contemporary women authors who both take back the practice of mythmaking and – as instigators and controllers of narrative – bring fresh meaning to the traditional use of story as a medium of social and personal message. [Read more…]

Vaughan Rapatahana

The Little Sublime Comedy by John Gallas (Carcanet Press, 2017), 184 pp., £11.69/$22.29; Coming to It by Sam Hunt (Potton & Burton, 2018), 208 pp., $29.99; That Derrida Whom I Derided Died by C.K. Stead (Auckland University Press, 2018), 128 pp., $29.99

Three collections of poetry, all distinctly different. Indeed, the only commonality I discern is that the poets are all older Pākehā men, even given that I have had some dealings with all three over my own reasonably lengthy lifetime.

Let’s look at the collections separately, starting with the youngest poet, John Gallas. The Little Sublime Comedy is sui generis. It parallels Dante’s Divine Comedy in terms of structure, namely a description of the hero’s moral progress through Hell on to Heaven, but here the parallel ends. Gallas sets his very clever and funny spoof/rip-off/pastiche imbroglio in contemporary Aotearoa New Zealand, and the text is chock-full of solidly Kiwi expressions such as ‘buggered if I knew’, and of Kiwi kai such as bulk cheese and ham sandwiches and Minties. [Read more…]