Blog Archives

Mating rituals, Jock Phillips

Mates  text by Jim Hopkins, photos by Julie Riley HarperCollins, $29.95, ISBN 1869503678   Telephone rings. S.Nag:  Hullo. Sam here. B.Loke:  Gidday, mate. Brucey here. How about coming down to the pub to watch the footie on the big screen?

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Posted in Non-fiction, Review, Sociology

The cave of making, Chris Else

Below Tim Corballis Victoria University Press, $24.95, ISBN 0864734131 Let me say at the outset that this is a remarkable novel; subtle, complex, delicately wrought. It is the kind of work that leaves you thinking not just about the material

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Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review

Poem – Nick Williamson

Margaret’s Roses   Christmas Day and Uncle Frank is glued to the Queen’s Speech. Her pigeon voice glides over oceans and out of the fraying mouth of a wireless. She wishes us well stuck at far-flung corners of the Commonwealth

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Posted in Poem

Obiturary — Allen Curnow

Allen Curnow (1911-2001)   When did a wind of the extreme South before Mix autumn, spring and death? (“Elegy on My Father”, Allen Curnow, 1949) I cannot remember when I first encountered Allen Curnow’s poetry. It seems to have been

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Posted in Obituaries

Words for music perhaps, Nick Bollinger

Love This Life: Lyrics 1978-2001 Neil Finn Allen & Unwin, $35.00, ISBN 1865085081 Lyrics without melody Mahinarangi Tocker Street Women Press, $19.95, ISBN 0473074427 I have always been a passionate pop fan, but never a great lover of the printed

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Posted in Literature, Music, Non-fiction, Poetry, Review

Perils and blessings, Charlotte Yates

“Imprints” I have three Joni Mitchell albums in my collection – The Hissing of Summer Lawns, Blue and Heijira. They have acted as both a personal and a professional musical resource. They’ve become albums I return to, not exclusively but

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Posted in Imprints

The uses of memory, Louise O’Brien

Little Moon  Emma Neale Vintage, $24.95, ISBN 1869414756 Little Moon, Emma Neale’s second novel, following the success of Night Swimming in 1998, is an account of the troubled childhood and adolescence of a young woman growing up in New Zealand.

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Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review

Elliptical documentaries, Paola Bilbrough

A Stone Seat and a Shadow Tree Adrienne Jansen Inkweed, $19.95, ISBN 0473072556 The best poems in Adrienne Jansen’s A Stone Seat and a Shadow Tree have a lucid simplicity to them. The most compelling are those about beginnings and

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Posted in Literature, Poetry, Review

Gains and pains, Brian Gaynor

World Famous in New Zealand: How New Zealand’s Leading Firms Became World-Class Competitors Colin Campbell-Hunt et al Auckland University Press, $39.95, ISBN 1869402499 The reforms initiated by Sir Roger Douglas in 1984 gave New Zealand businesspeople a wonderful opportunity to take

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Posted in Non-fiction, Review

The courtyard jungle, Kerry Carman

Life (and death) in a Small City Garden Philippa Swan Godwit, $24.95, ISBN 1869620798 In the vast and varied field of literature, gardens and writing are a classic pairing. Well-told stories of personal experience are few and far between, grist to

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Posted in Autobiography, Non-fiction, Review
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