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The grimness of contemporary realism, John McCrystal

Five Strings
Apirana Taylor
Anahera Press, $35.00,
ISBN 9780473389482

Iceland
Dominic Hoey
Steele Roberts, $35.00,
ISBN 978094749343I

It’s that time of the three-yearly cycle again. A billboard has gone up near my house promoting the political party that has, for the last couple of terms, been promising us a brighter future. It claims this party is “Delivering for New Zealanders” – which is true, so long as you don’t read it as a claim that it is delivering for all New Zealanders. And, as for the brighter future, well, there is a significant number of people in New Zealand for whom the future can only be brighter, given how bleak their present is.

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Paddling on, Harvey Molloy

A Canoe in Midstream: Poems New and Old Apirana Taylor Canterbury University Press, $25.00, ISBN 9781877257797 This year I taught a class of bright year nine students an introductory unit on poetry based on Jewels in the Water, an anthology

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Deceptive understatement, Apirana Taylor

Attack of the Skunk People Phil Kawana Huia, $19.95, ISBN 1 877241 20 2 Attack of the Skunk People is a collection of short stories and poetry with a cover that is colourful and mysterious in itself, a tempting invitation

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Posted in Literature, Poetry, Review, Short stories

Living on the edge, Brett Mason

He Tangi Aroha: A Cry for Love Apirana Taylor, Huia Publishers, $29.95 The Eye of the Everlasting Angel  Noel Virtue, Vintage, $19.95 1990. Lest we forget. 150 years. How could we forget? But it was a year no one seemed

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