Michael Steven

Dandy Bogan by Nick Ascroft (Boatwhistle Books, 2018), 82pp., $21.99; Islander by Lynn Davidson (Victoria University Press, 2019), 80pp., $25

Where I grew up, in the small East Auckland suburb of Bucklands Beach, bogans were both a source of envy and terror to me and my impressionable mates. We envied them for their wild girlfriends, their outlaw status, their flagrant disregard for the conservatism practised by our parents. They sold us smoking dope, did burnouts in their souped-up eight-cylinder rides outside our school during class time, and arrived at our parties in hordes to start fights. They were a mongrel cabal. A scruffy aristocracy, unaccountable to anyone. Dandies they were not.  [Read more…]

Renee Liang

All of Us by Adrienne Jansen and Carina Gallegos (Landing Press, 2018), 76pp., $22; More of Us edited by Adrienne Jansen, Clare Arnot, Danushka Devindra and Wesley Hollis (Landing Press, 2019), 92pp., $22

Writing migrant stories can turn into a perilous crossing. How do you empower without assuming? How do you give voice to people who have been taught by experience to stay silent? How do you know you are pulling out their real thoughts and not just something they think you should hear? And what are the implications of asking them to write in a language they are just learning to use?  [Read more…]

Emer Lyons

Wild Honey: Reading New Zealand women’s poetry by Paula Green (Massey University Press, 2019), 572 pp., $45

Intergenerational conceptions of poetry, conveyed through the voices of my lesbian foremothers, are paramount to my existence. Historical definitions of the poetic gather and coalesce into my own ability to write within the space my foremothers have cleared for me. Not just lesbian women poets, but all women poets have contributed to this clearing.  [Read more…]

Lynn Davidson

Lost and Somewhere Else by Jenny Bornholdt (Victoria University Press, 2019), 80pp, $25; Moth Hour by Anne Kennedy (Auckland University Press, 2019), 104pp, $25; The Grief Almanac: A sequel by Vana Manasiadis (Seraph Press, 2019), 110pp, $30

I love to read poets who circle certain material and go deeper in with each new book. I remember feeling this sense of archaeological pleasure when I read Jenny Bornholdt’s wonderful The Rocky Shore, and I feel it again now, reading Lost and Somewhere Else. The book weaves in preoccupations we have met before in her work, including reflections on family and friends, gardens and clothes. The clothes on the line in the opening poem all have a story attached to them, including ‘The shirt / he wore to talk about / paintings.’ I enjoy how the world of art and work and the world of our private domestic selves, our vulnerable animal selves, are not separated from each other. It is a book about connections, and the striking cover design includes a mushroom – fungi being the great connector, the internet of the underground. Lost and Somewhere Else is also a book about the often-bewildering process of becoming ‘girl’ and about the process of unbecoming. It charts losses: children go out and ‘forget / to come home again’. Family members die: ‘Our middle age / is one long goodbye.’ The Earth is in peril, and just living (and especially flying) is dangerous. It puts the relationship between love and loss front and centre: ‘Now, nearing sixty, / this woman loves her husband/ferociously.’  [Read more…]

Michael Steven

This Thin Now by Jo Thorpe (Mākaro Press, 2018), 50 pp, $25; Her Limitless Her by Reihana Robinson (Mākaro Press, 2018), 82 pp, $25; Over There a Mountain by Elizabeth Welsh (Mākaro Press, 2018), 88pp, $25

Fifteen years ago an illness enabled me a spell on the sickness benefit. I had time on my hands. In lieu of a formal arts education, I decided to undertake my own immersion job studying the poetry of New Zealand/Aotearoa. I spent my days scouring shops like Moa Hunter, paperback exchanges, op-shops and book fairs, seeking out collections by well-known and obscure poets. At night I stayed up late reading the collection I was building. [Read more…]