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…]

Lynn Jenner

Working the Tang by Nicola Easthope (The Cuba Press, 2018), 86pp, $25; How I Get Ready by Ashleigh Young (Victoria University Press, 2019), 96pp, $25

Nicola Easthope’s poetry collection Working the Tang comes seven years after her first collection, leaving my arms free to fly around you (Steele Roberts, 2011). The first impression of the book is that it is an object of beauty. The cover image by Kimbra Taylor shows two women harvesting seaweed, or ‘wirkin the tang’. The women stand on dark broody seaweed green and behind them is a pea-green sea. Wind blows the seaweed and one woman’s dress. The book is printed on a matt cream paper that is soft to the touch and the design and typeface are pleasing. [Read more…]

Mary Cresswell

Everything’s Something in Place by John Geraets (Titus Books, 2019), 326 pp., $42; Contents Under Pressure by Gail Ingram (Pūkeko Publications, 2019),86 pp., $25; Lay Studies by Steven Toussaint (Victoria University Press, 2019), 108 pp., $25

John Geraets’ Everything’s Something in Place: Writings 1980–2015 is in many ways a celebration of the survivor’s right to write history. He gives us what he would like to be professionally remembered by: literary criticism, poems, general essays, anecdotes that are part of New Zealand literary history.

It is not a scholarly biography, however. Geraets revises essays published over a period of some years, to the extent that much of the material floats unattached to any identifiable date. This is fine – he alerts us in informative introductions that may well be the most recently written content, though he doesn’t specify. He reveals his journey from being a ‘lapsing Catholic’ (sounds continuous) to a ‘direct engagement in Vipassana and Buddhist life principles’ (sounds staunch). His first encounter with Zen is written as a travel diary, doubly attractive to me for not mentioning Alan Watts. [Read more…]