Landfall Review Online

New Zealand books in review

In Counterpoint to the Music of Time 

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Max Oettli

Aberhart Starts Here by Lara Strongman with Laurence Aberhart (Christchurch Art Gallery, 2018), 136 pp., $39.99

This catalogue is based on the Christchurch Art Gallery show of Aberhart’s early work (1975 to 1983 with one picture from 1986), from when he was living in Lyttelton and later working as an instructor at the University of Canterbury School of Fine Art at Ilam.

My initial thought was to wonder: have we got to a point when everything that can be written about Laurence Aberhart has been written? Can we squeeze one more review out of this gigantic stack of beautiful work that he has shored up against the crumbling ruins of our civilisation? [Read more…]

Having a WORD With You

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WORD Christchurch Festival, 29 August to 2 September 2018

Giovanni Tiso 

I used to be a writers’ festival sceptic. Aside from attending the odd book launch growing up, I never felt a great need to listen to my favourite writers present or discuss their work, let alone many writers at the same time. It struck me as an odd idea: surely this was something they all would be better suited to doing in writing, if they absolutely had to?  [Read more…]

Improvisations and Returns

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Bryan Walpert

Two Lagoons by Trevor Hayes (Seraph Press, 2017), 20 pp., $20; Floods Another Chamber by James Brown (Victoria University Press, 2017), 112 pp., $25; Symphony for Human Transport by Lisa Samuels (Shearsman Books, 2017), 75 pp., $17

Trevor Hayes is a Punakaiki poet, but his chapbook is founded often on the landscapes of South America, where he has lived, travelled and taught. It opens appropriately with ‘Cartography’, orienting us with a sense of place and speaker—someone reading a map at a cafe mid-journey, even if that speaker is in the second person, the lyric ‘I’ snuck in as a quotation in italics: ‘It’s a relief to be able to say / I am here—as you look out / on the contour lines …’ The sense of journey continues in many of these beautiful, carefully rendered poems, e.g. ‘Going Nowhere’, ‘Peruvian Light’, ‘Cabo de Gata, Almería’. These are uncertain landscapes in which the speaker feels marginal, such as ‘empty museums / and vacant parking lots’, and it is clear such landscapes are both physical and emotional.  [Read more…]

Float, Float On …

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David Geary

Floating Islanders: Pasifika theatre in Aotearoa by Lisa Warrington and David O’Donnell (Otago University Press, 2017), 284 pp. $39.95

Our quest should not to be for a revival of our past cultures but for the creation of new cultures which are free of the taint of colonialism and based firmly on our own pasts. The quest should be for a new Oceania.–Albert Wendt

The beauty of this book is that apart from being an entertaining and comprehensive summary of the birth and rise of Pasifika theatre in New Zealand, it also serves as a compelling social history.  [Read more…]

The Written Strips Memory

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Mary Cresswell 

Aspiring Daybook: The diary of Elsie Winslow by Annabel Wilson (Submarine/Mākaro, 2018) 128 pp., $25; Are Friends Electric? by Helen Heath (Victoria University Press, 2018), 90 pp., $25; Winter Eyes by Harry Ricketts (Victoria University Press, 2018), 80 pp., $25; Work & Play by Owen Bullock (Canberra: Recent Work Press, 2017), 76 pp., AUD$12.95; Semi by Owen Bullock (Glebe: Puncher and Wattmann), 124 pp., AUD$25

Annabel Wilson’s Aspiring Daybook is a very good read. The narrative is a year in the life of (fictional) Elsie Winslow, brought back from Europe to Wānaka to take care of her dying brother. Wilson uses poems, emails, photos and one-liners to record this year: it plays out in the turn of the seasons in surrounding mountains and lakes as well as in human lives, not just of her brother but also of a glaciologist who ‘had no time to get his ice axe in when he slipped’ (p122). The book’s excellent layout helps move the plot along, using a variety of formats to reflect different topics as they develop. [Read more…]