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An account of trauma, Michael Hulse

Allen Curnow: Collected Poems
Elizabeth Caffin and Terry Sturm (eds)
Auckland University Press, $60.00,
ISBN 9781869408510

Allen Curnow’s poetry is a transcript of trauma. “Morning by morning incorruption / Puts on corruption”: this most fundamental of thoughts, borne in upon every one of us as the time of our lives moves from childhood to what we call understanding, and onward, is not Curnow’s alone. The experiences of mutability, transience, and destruction, are universal. “A child returned / Discerns in quicksand his own footprint / Brimming and fading, vanishing.” The evidence that whatever begins in joy, hope and openness is swept away in the indifferent whirlwind lies before us everywhere. Time with a gift of tears. 

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Posted in Literature, Poetry, Review

Woven among the lines, Elizabeth Caffin

Mike Doyle: Collected Poems, 1951–2009 Ekstasis Editions, $55.95, ISBN 9781897430637   When I moved to Auckland in 1985, I found the literary world was haunted by ghosts. There was Rex Fairburn and Maurice Duggan and Frank Sargeson and Mike Joseph

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“Let us go then, you and I”, Elizabeth Caffin

Elizabeth Caffin recalls first looking into T S Eliot’s poems.   Some time in the mid-1950s I gave a morning talk to the third form of a Christchurch secondary school. My subject was the poetry of T S Eliot; I

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Posted in Imprints

Age-old contracts, Elizabeth Caffin

A Year to Learn a Woman Paddy Richardson Penguin Books, $28.00, ISBN 9780143010029 Misconduct Bridget van der Zijpp Victoria University Press, $30.00,  ISBN 9780864735751 The Rehearsal Eleanor Catton  Victoria University Press, $30.00,  ISBN 9780864735812 A woman around 40, now on

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Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review

Risky enterprises, Elizabeth Caffin

Ripples on the Lake Dawn Rotorangi HarperCollins, $26.99, ISBN 13978869506391 Cutting Caleb Keys Glenn Bowden Penguin Books, $28.00, ISBN 9780143006008 Rocking Horse Road Carl Nixon Vintage, $27.99, ISBN 9781969419073 The Blue Mary McCallum Penguin Books, $28.00, ISBN 9780143007234 In the

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Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review

The old frisson Elizabeth Caffin

Billie’s Kiss Elizabeth Knox Victoria University Press, $29.95, ISBN 0864734263 Having begun in some reasonably recognisable New Zealand locations, Elizabeth Knox, novelist, may, we now know, take off and land almost anywhere. What is striking about all her work is

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Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review

Quiet successes, Elizabeth Caffin

Good at Geography Jane Westaway Penguin, $24.95, ISBN 0 14 029142 3 The Company of a Daughter Paddy Richardson Steele Roberts, $24.95, ISBN 0 95 837128 8 Across the Dreaming Night Judith White Vintage, $24.95, ISBN 1 86941 412 8

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Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review

The sadness of the incomplete, Elizabeth Caffin

A Boy and his Uncle Anne Kennedy Picador $24.95 ISBN 0 33036057 4 Leave Before You Go Emily Perkins Picador $24.95 ISBN 0 33037204 1 In the opening pages of both these novels is that journey we all are heir

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Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review

Jane Austen’s unlikely sister, Elizabeth Caffin

Cousins Patricia Grace, Penguin, $24.95 We now have the good fortune in New Zealand that a number of fiction writers can be relied on to produce a good book time after time – Jane Frame, Owen Marshall, Maurice Gee, and

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Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review
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