Landfall Review Online

Steaming Open the Archives

November 1, 2019 Leave a Comment

Briar Wood

Dead Letters: Censorship and subversion in New Zealand 1914–1920 by Jared Davidson (Otago University Press, 2019), 296pp, $35

Reading the history of the years of the First World War and after through the experience of those who were outside the dominant political narratives of the time is a welcome step in presenting diversity, at a time when national borders in many places are being reinforced rather than opening up. Jared Davidson’s diligent research brings hitherto untold stories into the historical mainstream and extends our understanding of what life was like during these much-memorialised times. Although the subtitle seems broad, most of the evidence about censorship and the widespread resistance to it in Aotearoa New Zealand at the time of the First World War has come from government-censored letters: hence the book’s title. Some further discussion of newspaper, magazine, film and publishing restrictions might also have been set beside this intriguing discussion. [Read more…]

Earth’s Last Great Wilderness

November 1, 2019 Leave a Comment

Neville Peat

Fifteen Million Years in Antarctica by Rebecca Priestley (Victoria University Press, 2019), 384pp., $40

Despite an inhospitable nature, or maybe simply because it’s a frozen desert, Antarctica attracts an array of superlatives – coldest, windiest, highest, driest, remotest and last-discovered of the planet’s seven continents. Yet another set of descriptors derives from the human activity of recent decades – most pristine, most peaceful, most collaborative.

Yes, collaboration, internationally. As New Zealand’s most famous Antarctic explorer, Sir Edmund Hillary, once said, Antarctica’s extreme environment ‘drives people together’. [Read more…]

Two Rooms in the House of Poetry

November 1, 2019 Leave a Comment

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…]

Daring to Take the Leap into Clarity

November 1, 2019 Leave a Comment

Bill Direen

Karl Wolfskehl: A poet in exile by Friedrich Voit (Cold Hub Press, 2019), 232pp, $40

To start at the end, the Epilogue tells us about the growth of international interest in Karl Wolfskehl over recent decades, and the handling, by his companion Margot Ruben, of his literary estate up until her death in 1980. Throughout the biography, Friedrich Voit gives us enough facts, without building her up unduly, to get a fair picture of the importance of Ruben in Wolfskehl’s work, and the intricacies of their relationship. The Wolfskehl–Ruben story is only one of many fascinating threads. [Read more…]

A Go-To Library of Images

October 1, 2019 Leave a Comment

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…]