Landfall Review Online

New Zealand books in review

Paradoxes, Mysteries and Obsessions

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This review was first published in the print edition of Landfall 241.

David Eggleton

Ralph Hotere: The dark is light enough by Vincent O’Sullivan (Penguin, 2020), 368pp, $45

The artistic achievement of Ralph Hotere (Te Aupōuri) towers like a great lighthouse above the pure harbour. It’s as if he illuminates, with a delicate precision and a sweeping blade of light, New Zealand’s brooding darkness, spiritual as well as topographical. Born near Mitimiti, Northland, in 1931 and baptised into the Roman Catholic church as Hone Papita Raukua Hotere, he was an art prodigy almost from the beginning and drew at every opportunity—even with a stick in the sand on the beach near his childhood home, content to watch the waves wash away his efforts. His most remarkable and significant period of artistic production, though, lasted for around forty years between about 1962 and 2002. He died in Dunedin in 2013. His was a busy, restless, crowded existence, as Vincent O’Sullivan tells it in his fascinating ‘biographical portrait’, which succeeds in synthesising a colourful, gossipy, anecdotal narrative out of the many paradoxes, mysteries and obsessions of this energetic and prolific New Zealand artist’s life. [Read more…]

Finding Our Light 

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Renee Liang

A Clear Dawn: New Asian voices from Aotearoa New Zealand, edited by Paula Morris and Alison Wong (Auckland University Press, 2021), 340pp., $49.99

The first thing I notice is the weight. This anthology of 75 Asian writers, the first significant assembly of our voices in Aotearoa, is a hefty tome. In my wondering hand it feels like a statement: we have arrived. The book is covered in a glorious silky matte fabric designed by Keely O’Shannessy, its depiction of sunlight falling on waves reminiscent of a Japanese woodblock print. Later I discover that the fabric wipes clean easily. Practicality and beauty in one: how very Asian.

But even the concept of ‘Asian’ and who is defined by this label is fraught. As the editors note in their introduction, it’s an imprecise term that doesn’t communicate the diversity and political complexity of the countries making up ‘Asia’ and yet, it’s a term that can be embraced by people of many backgrounds precisely because it is so waffly. Writers of East Asian, South Asian and Southeast Asian descent are included, as are Pacific, European and North American writers of Asian ancestry; missing are voices from Middle Eastern countries. It is clear that editors Paula Morris and Alison Wong set themselves a difficult task. As they note, all anthologies must have limits.  [Read more…]

Lives in Little Pieces

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Rachel O’Connor 

The Disinvent Movement by Susanna Gendall (Victoria University Press, 2021), 144pp., $30; Greta and Valdin by Rebecca K. Reilly (Victoria University Press, 2021), 352pp., $35

In the very first, very short chapter of The Disinvent Movement, the narrator reveals a great deal: she lives in France, she is from New Zealand, and the cut on her head shaped like an Arabic letter was not caused by a fall at the swimming baths, despite the carefully rehearsed story to that effect that she recites for her doctor’s disinterested benefit. The implication is obvious: here is a victim of abuse living life in lies. But what is also immediately clear is that the narrator has an extraordinary capacity for distraction (so handy when someone is stitching your head together), which becomes a factor in both her salvation and her suffering. [Read more…]

Deep Soul Cleanse

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Chris Tse

Somewhere a Cleaner, edited by Andrienne Jansen, Te Rongomai Tipene-Matua, Joan Begg, Wesley Hollis and Nicky Subono (Landing Press, 2020), 184pp., $25; Second Person by Rata Gordon (Victoria University Press, 2020), 80pp., $25; Ngā Whakamatuatanga / Interludes by Vaughan Rapatahana (CyberWit, 2019), 136pp., US$15

Somewhere a Cleaner is an anthology from Landing Press, whose kaupapa is to make poetry part of everyday life and to give a voice to people who don’t have much voice. This unique collection fulfils that aim by bringing together mostly unknown and novice writers to share their stories about that most universal of acts: cleaning. The book’s framework is not dissimilar to the one Landing Press used in All of Us and More of Us, two collections that focused on the stories of New Zealanders from migrant and refugee backgrounds. There is some crossover with those earlier books in Somewhere a Cleaner, which includes contributors who have settled in New Zealand from places as far-flung as West Siberia, Syria, Sri Lanka and Cambodia. You’ll spot a few familiar names when scanning the contents list—Lynn Jenner, Siobhan Harvey, Tina Shaw, Joanna Cho, Johanna Aitchison and Vaughan Rapatahana—but the book’s contributors’ list is dominated by new or novice writers. This is rather refreshing. The editors accepted open submissions and actively sought people to include to ensure that the book accurately reflected the diverse backgrounds and experiences of cleaners in New Zealand. The result is a mix of poetry and short prose pieces that shine a light on a topic and occupation that has been politicised in recent years. [Read more…]

I Say! Narrative ‘I’ in Three New Zealand Poetry Titles

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Claire Lacey

Pins by Natalie Morrison (Victoria University Press, 2020), 70pp., $25; Things OK With You? by Vincent O’Sullivan (Victoria University Press, 2021), 96pp., $25; I Am In Bed With You by Emma Barnes (Auckland University Press, 2021), 88pp., $24.99

Writing in the first person is a way of establishing a narrative character with a specific voice and perspective. It can be easy to conflate the ‘I’ of the poem with the ‘I’ of its author, but ‘I’ can be much more subtle and even mischievous. Who speaks, and to whom? The following three collections are very different case studies on how poets engage with the first person singular.

Pins by Natalie Morrison is a book-length poem that explores a fictional narrator’s relationship to her missing sister. This long character study reminded me of Canadian poet Sandy Pool, whose poetry books Exploding into Night and Undark each pursue an untold narrative about a publicly reported tragedy. I enjoy this approach to the book-length project, where a particular perspective is thoroughly investigated. In Pins, the narrator adopts her lost sister’s obsession with pins:

I have begun to dedicate things to you.

These poems, for example; I pin snippets

to your bedroom wall.  [Read more…]