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…]

Ted Jenner

Postcard Stories by Richard von Sturmer (Titus Books, 2019), unpaginated, $35; How We Talk to Each Other by Victoria Broome (Cold Hub Press, 2019), 32pp., $19.95; Other by Ruth Hanover (Cold Hub Press, 2019), 48pp., $19.95

Postcards (eighty-three of them to be exact) are the means von Sturmer uses in his latest book to generate haiku-like poems with fragmentary narratives as their guiding principle. These postcards though are not of the conventional ‘Skytower’ or ‘Downtown’ variety, the kind we send to friends overseas bearing an immediately recognisable landmark of the locality they have left behind. Von Sturmer admits to an ‘eccentric and subversive’ interest in the genre whereby a postcard is appreciated for its own ‘oddness’; he doesn’t flinch from gaudy runs of colour or biliously roseate sunsets, and favours features such as tombs, canyons, or forest paths that induce ‘a small reverie’ – the baths at Pompeii then rather than the Grand Canal in Venice. [Read more…]

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…]