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Landfall Review Online

New Zealand books in review

Old Ways and New Directions

October 1, 2020 Leave a Comment

Erik Kennedy

Shape of the Heart by Kevin Ireland (Quentin Wilson Publishing, 2020), 64pp., $24.99; This Is Your Real Name by Elizabeth Morton (Otago University Press, 2020), 72pp., $27.50; The Wanderer by Ron Riddell (HeadworX, 2020), 84pp., $25

It shouldn’t be surprising that a book of poems dedicated to a cohort of fellow octogenarian writers (including Maurice Gee, Vincent O’Sullivan and C.K. Stead) should muse on the ageing process—its frustrations, indignities and lessons. And if the poet is Kevin Ireland, it shouldn’t be a surprise that many of those poems are crackers. Ireland has written good poems about ageing since before he could claim to be old; I’m thinking of, for example, ‘An old man on Capri’, from 1990’s Tiberius at the Beehive: 

There is nothing that amuses me more,

so far from the Forum, in my decline,

than to torture the politicians

 

with the prospect of my return. [Read more…]

Filed Under: poetry

Feminist Eco-Fiction on the Mothership 

October 1, 2020 Leave a Comment

Gina Cole

The Stone Wētā by Octavia Cade (Paper Road Press, 2020), 174pp., $25

The Stone Wētā by Octavia Cade tells the story of ten motivated, determined and brave women scientists, members of a global underground network of ‘operatives’ engaged in a cold war against government deniers of climate change. We follow the women who work in isolation in their various disciplines as the Earth moves towards environmental collapse. The women function as a network of resistance to governments who are suppressing, editing and massaging climate data and pandering to a quest for power and financial profit at the expense of the environment. When I think of what is happening to island nations and the natural environment in the Pacific today, there is a disturbingly familiar ring to this theme of the abuse of knowledge and the environment in exchange for capitalist goals. It is no surprise, then, that preservation is a central theme of the book. The scientists’ collective goal is to preserve climate data in an unadulterated form. It is a future scenario that Cade, a scientist herself, has clearly created from the current mess we’ve got ourselves into on planet Earth. [Read more…]

Filed Under: fiction

From Exacting Moments to the Art of Tragedy

October 1, 2020 Leave a Comment

Patricia Prime

Body Politic by Mary Cresswell (The Cuba Press, 2020), 68pp., $25; Far-Flung by Rhian Gallagher (Auckland University Press, 2020), 96pp., $24.99; Michael, I Thought You Were Dead by Michael Fitzsimons (The Cuba Press, 2020), 92pp., $25.00

Body Politic by Mary Cresswell is an inspired collection of poems. It is an ambitious attempt to transfer a scientist’s concern for detail into poetry. In part the volume describes the strange paradox of the pandemic that threatens humanity, while at the same time revealing the fortitude of humankind to overcome adversity.

As a surgeon cuts into the human body, the poet cuts into our perceptions of the world. Cresswell’s poems consist of words, satire and absurdity as they move between people, science and nature.

The most expressive poems in this collection are in those lucid and limpid lines where time slows—lines that lodge in the reader’s mind, as in the following stanza from the title poem, ‘Body politic’:

I liked the sinister look of you—we all did—and I was left alone to

play on your banks. [Read more…]

Filed Under: poetry

The Slow Wheels of Justice 

October 1, 2020 Leave a Comment

Gerry Te Kapa Coates

Justice & Race: Campaigns against racism and abuse in Aotearoa New Zealand by Oliver Sutherland (Steele Roberts, 2020), 288pp., $34.99

Professor Emeritus David Williams, in his foreword to this important book, says it ‘is not an easy read’. The book deals with issues around systemic racism in the justice and policing jurisdictions from 1969 to 1986. Heavy topics, yes, but the book, thanks to Oliver Sutherland’s masterful handling of the material, reads like a thriller, peppered with well-known names and events highlighted by newspaper clippings and photographs.  [Read more…]

Filed Under: history, law, maori and pacific, politics

He Whenua Waimarie: A Lucky Country

October 1, 2020 Leave a Comment

Vaughan Rapatahana

Funkhaus by Hinemoana Baker (Victoria University Press, 2020), 79pp., $25; Upturned by Kay McKenzie Cooke (The Cuba Press, 2020), 98pp., $25; AUP New Poets 6 (Ben Kemp, Vanessa Crofskey and Chris Stewart) (Auckland University Press, 2020), 114pp., $29.99

These are three new collections of poetry, all from 2020: five poets, three of whom are categorised as ‘new’ or early in their careers as poets.

Across these three volumes, and even within the Auckland University Press collection, there is tremendous variety with little in common overall. Except that they are written largely in te reo Ingarihi, with the exception of some snippets of te reo Māori. [Read more…]

Filed Under: poetry

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