Landfall Review Online

New Zealand books in review

A Dynamic Optimism

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Peter Shand

Gordon Walters: New vision edited by Lucy Hammonds, Laurence Simmons and Julia Waite (Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki & Dunedin Public Art Gallery, 2017), 244 pp., $79

The title of Gordon Walters: New vision presents its own wero. Building from Walters’ innovating position within New Zealand art, the title points to the writers’ collective aim of presenting new ways of engaging with and thinking about his work. Hence their challenge to realise novel propositions for geometric abstraction, for ambitious local art practices, for cross-cultural appropriation and/or for histories of modernism. This is in the context of an artist who enjoys a sound if moderate bibliography, with notable contributions from Michael Dunn and, in particular, the late Francis Pound. This handsome addition to that record accompanies a touring retrospective exhibition curated by three of the book’s essayists: Lucy Hammonds, Laurence Simmons and Julia Waite.  [Read more…]

Performing Otherwise

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Emma Willis

Performing Dramaturgy by Fiona Graham (Playmarket Press, 2018), 189 pp., $40

If you have picked up a programme for a new play, devised or dance-theatre work, you may have seen the job title ‘dramaturge’ listed in the production credits. But what is a dramaturge? Even for those within the theatre industry, the concept is shrouded in a degree of mystery. It’s a seemingly shape-shifting position that changes according to any given group of people and process. Fiona Graham’s Performing Dramaturgy examines the role of the dramaturge in depth, its origins and many variations within the contemporary context, and analyses it precisely as a dynamic and ‘nomadic’ process. Drawing on her extensive professional experience, Graham weaves together an elegant text that moves between theatre history, theorisation, personal reflection and practical advice in order to answer the question of what a dramaturge does – or might do. As she notes, her aim is to ‘offer insights that will open up all sorts of new creative opportunities for practitioners by unsettling conventional ways of seeing and doing’. [Read more…]

I Felt My Humanness Too Much

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Michael Steven

The Facts by Therese Lloyd (Victoria University Press, 2018), $25; Punctuation by Rogelio Guedea, with translations by Roger Hickin (Cold Hub Press, 2017), 48 pp., $25

If you favour a kind of poetry that behaves itself, that plays it safe by treating difficult subjects with kid gloves and always opts for easy resolution, The Facts is not the book for you. It is brutal, disquieting, and in parts downright heartbreaking. It is also unflinchingly honest, intelligent, wise and beautiful. Therese Lloyd’s second full-length collection is the creative component of her doctoral submission, a dissertation on ekphrastic practices in the work of Canadian poet and classicist Anne Carson.  [Read more…]

Burning Ambition

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Rebecca Styles

Tinderbox by Megan Dunn (Galley Press, 2017), 151 pp., $30

Tinderbox (2017) by Megan Dunn is a narrative about writing – about the writer we want to be coming up against the writer we are. About the ideas we think will come to fruition coming up against the realities of copyright and the commodification of literature. It’s about the time it takes to write and formulate ideas amongst the stuff of life. [Read more…]

A Superb Scrutiny

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Briar Wood

Tuai: A traveller in two worlds by Alison Jones and Kuni Kaa Jenkins (Bridget Williams Books, 2017), 288 pp., $39.99

James Barry’s fine 1818 portrait, Tooi, a New Zealand Chief, on the cover of this book, gives an indication of why the authors must have chosen to set out on this voyage of research about the northern Ngare Raumati rangatira, and of the taonga of information they reveal along the way. Tuai’s mana is evident in the painting. He looks away from the viewer towards some distant focus, possibly aware of being observed, but seeming to appear vigilant, spiritually aware and detached all at once.  [Read more…]