Erik Kennedy

Every now and then I have another child by Diane Brown (Otago University Press, 2020), 164pp, $29.95; Unmooring by Bridget Auchmuty (Quentin Wilson Publishing, 2020), 88pp, $24.99; I Am a Human Being by Jackson Nieuwland (Compound Press, 2020), 76pp, $20

If you’re familiar with Diane Brown’s previous book of poetic memoir, Taking My Mother to the Opera, well, imagine that knack for life-writing but applied to a psychological thriller in verse and you’ve got Every now and then I have another child. Over the course of 110 lyrics the protagonist, the writer and teacher Joanna Lodge, adopts a couple of phantom children, is haunted by the spectre of (possibly) a long-lost sister, is caught up in a murder investigation, and discovers what really happened to her mother, who walked out on the family when Joanna was ten. Reality and fantasy wind up thoroughly intermixed, bubbling away together like the lager and fizzy drink in a shandy. [Read more…]

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…]