New Zealand books in review
Jodie Dalgleish
Kaitiaki o te Pō by John-Paul Powley (Seraph Press, 2018), 165 pp, $35
In his book of essays, Kaitiaki o te Pō, historian and teacher John-Paul Powley ruminates on self and a broader culture through the flow of his life, which eddies around the jut of histories and events that break a country’s current into caesurae. Each one is a stopping point full of personal refusals and tentative potentialities, poignant and sometimes rousing. [Read more…]
Tasha Haines
The Writing Life: Twelve New Zealand authors by Deborah Shepard (Massey University Press, 2018), 463 pp., $49.99
In her introduction to The Writing Life, Deborah Shepard highlights the determination and passion of the twelve writers she interviews and curates into this collection. Shepard has selected a diverse group covering many genres: from writing for children, to many approaches to the novel, poetry and non-fiction. The writers are Joy Cowley, Marilyn Duckworth, Tessa Duder, Chris Else, Patricia Grace, David Hill, Witi Ihimaera, Fiona Kidman, Owen Marshall, Vincent O’Sullivan, Philip Temple and Albert Wendt. [Read more…]
Courtney Sina Meredith
The Fuse Box, edited by Emily Perkins and Chris Price (Victoria University Press, 2017) 296 pp., $35
The Fuse Box is a collection of essays on writing by celebrated writers from Victoria University’s International Institute of Modern Letters. Edited by Emily Perkins and Chris Price, contributors include Lloyd Jones, Elizabeth Knox, Tusiata Avia, Pip Adam, Damien Wilkins, Bill Manhire, Patricia Grace, Briar Grace-Smith, Gary Henderson, Tina Makereti, Ken Duncum, Ashleigh Young and Hera Lindsay Bird.
The blurb promises writing strategies and guidance for all stages of writing life from poets, dramatists, novelists and writing teachers, but essentially this is a book about creative survival and a survey of the private processes of storytellers. The essay forms are as eclectic as the subjects they address. There are interviews, poems as essays and poems within essays, chapters that read like manifestos, experimental moments of impact, and the more traditional essay of pages dripping in words. Some pieces feel like a good friend exploring their personal wisdom while others are more academic, detached and contemplative. [Read more…]
Kiran Dass
Can You Tolerate This? Personal Essays by Ashleigh Young (Victoria University Press, 2016), 223 pp., $30
Sometime in 2008 in Wellington, my good friend John Paul and I met for coffee at the Milk Crate in Quilters Bookshop. He told me about how his younger sister Ashleigh was studying creative writing and that some of the non-fiction pieces she was working on were about him. I asked him how he felt about that, and I remember how he said, resigned, that in order not to fret about what the people you write about might think, his sister’s tutor had advised the students to ‘write about people as if they are dead’.
John Paul is a friend who always inspired me to stretch my vocabulary, and I always admired his clever insights and beautifully unique way of looking at and experiencing the world. And these 21 superbly observed personal essays by Ashleigh Young show that this is something that must run in the family. And her family, from her brothers John Paul and Neil to her parents Russell and Julia, feature in many of these pieces. Young has a stunning sense of the quietly absurd, dryly hilarious, woebegone and wistful angles of life. She’s a sensitive writer and these are thoughtful and observational pieces written in an authentic voice. [Read more…]
Pat White
Extraordinary Anywhere: Essays on place from Aotearoa New Zealand edited by Ingrid Horrocks and Cherie Lacey (Victoria University Press, 2016), 222 pp., $40
Extraordinary Anywhere consists of sixteen essays, a ten-page introduction jointly signed by the editors, and a response essay by Martin Edmond: 222 pages of prose in all.
Edmond writes that in order ‘to investigate something properly we need … archives, dreams, memories’. That was expressed in another way some decades ago by the American author Wendell Berry, who suggested that ‘we have to know where we are before we know who we are’ – in other words develop a sense of deep culture, human or otherwise. An individual, he is saying, needs to explore the physical, historical and ‘storied’ environment of a place before he/she can truly place themselves there. We can use either of these statements as parameters with which to consider the contents of the volume, because they suggest a movement beyond the superficial from the essayist. [Read more…]
Denis Harold
Shelf Life: Reviews, replies and reminiscences by C.K. Stead (Auckland University Press, 2016), 452 pp., $45
C.K. Stead’s latest collection of ruminations, Shelf Life, is illuminating about what has driven and drives this venerable, multi-award-winning author. He states in an interview that what is important to him is observation: ‘It’s the escape – the relief! – from the ego. The world around you is what matters.’ The back-cover blurb tells the reader that ‘the guiding voice’ is ‘clear, incisive’. One is offered the image of an author polishing his prose and verse to transparency.
This is Stead’s fourth selection of assorted literary criticism and related prose, the last appearing eight years ago. He claims this is a milder, less controversial selection than the previous three. The retired don calls this non-fiction his ‘afternoon work’; ‘morning work’ is writing verse and fiction. [Read more…]